The Mysteries of Marcie Fleach: Chapter 11-Bleed the Ghoul
by Sketchpad
Summary: Marcie reluctantly babysits a couple of prima donnas while trying to solve the case of their missing director. Can two horror movie legends help Marcie solve the case, without driving each other, or her, crazy?
1. Chapter 1

_1~_

Personnel bustled amidst the sets and sound stages within the lot of Crystal Cove Studios that morning.

Although it was touted as "The Second Hollywood," and wasn't based there, the studio's employees were proud of their productions' efforts over the years, and their collective energies were high, as was reflected in the hype concerning a new big-budget horror movie that was being shot on the premises.

One of the studio's newest, and largest, sound stages was dedicated to the shoot. Grips, soundmen and camera operators stood by the tools of their trade, while the screenwriter whose work was being immortalized on film, sat, with marker in one hand, and the script in the other, ready to make last-minute adjustments to his story, when needed, and, if necessary.

Other workers, like those who managed lighting, experienced make-up artists, and simple stage hands, milled around, off-camera, busy with tasks they had spent years perfecting.

Then, there was the film's director, sitting on his folding chair throne, perusing and commanding all he surveyed. His kingdom was ruled from behind the camera, as it should have been. However, his domain was two subjects short. Two subjects whose very presence rivaled the director's, in terms of necessity. His stars.

"Where are those two?" he grumbled with a sigh. Their agents praised them both with being professional beyond reproach, yet, here they were, holding up precious shoot time and wasting even more precious money.

"You know them," the screenwriter muttered from his chair. "They didn't get their eggs just right, this morning, or something. And that's when they're not bickering at each other like a married couple. Probably sulking in their trailers, again. Want me to go get them?"

With an even deeper sigh, the director stood from his chair, and gave a stretch to knock out the kinks of the morning. "No. I'll get Their Highnesses. Y'know, it's too bad we can motivate our actors with cattle prods."

After commanding the shoot to be halted for the time being, he shambled out of the sound stage, and headed towards the space where the trailers for his production were parked.

However, even though he knew where his actors' trailers were, he decided to make a beeline towards his own. He needed to decompress from all of this early morning nonsense, and what his people didn't know, wouldn't hurt them.

"Another day, another session of those two prima donnas squawking at each other and wasting precious time," he groused. "I'm a director, darn it, not a therapist."

Stomping up the stairs, and closing the door behind him, the director went over to the nearby couch, and flopped down.

"I only took this job because I know that I'm a better director than those youngsters out there who think that just because they sat through their own god-awful music videos, that makes them directors," he said to himself. "Feh!"

He thrust his hands behind the couch's pillows, knocking them over in his concerted search for something.

"Where's my old friend?" he muttered. "I know I left it in here." His hand then banged against a hard, glassy object. Grabbing it, he pulled out his concealed treasure, a half-consumed bottle of whiskey. "Ah! Hello, old friend!"

Eagerly, he took from the table in front of the couch, a shot glass, and prepared to pour his first draft of the elixir, but then stopped, when he heard the front door's knob twist, and the door beginning to open.

"Don't believe in knocking, do you?" he called out. "I'll see you in few minutes, whoever you are." Then, he returned his attention back to his impending drink.

So intent was his focus on the drink, that he didn't notice the dark shape of a man slip into the trailer, and approach him quickly and silently. Only the director's chance glance back towards the door alerted him, too late, to his presence.

By being seated, the director couldn't get up in time to fend off the intruder, a pale, elfin-eared figure dressed in both parts, stereotypical Transylvanian count and mad scientist, by way of surgeon, outfits.

He thought of yelling protestations in the hopes that someone outside would hear, and get help, but the attacker's look was so strikingly bizarre, and his ill intent, so clear, that the only thing that left the director's throat was a surprisingly high-pitched wail of terror that only some lowly PA barely heard on his way to an errand.

* * *

Marcie Fleach barely noticed the noise of conversation rising and falling around her, in her high school cafeteria, as she absently poked at her lunch with a plastic fork.

It had been a few days since she left home and father behind, and stayed under the kind auspices of The Dinkleys.

That, alone, made her feel guilty. They certainly didn't deserve to be drawn into her dysfunctional conflicts, no matter how much they insisted.

Even though she would never agree with him concerning her future, she tried as hard as she could to help him with his business, if not console and comfort him, as a dutiful daughter might. But his attitude, in the end, was so cold and flint-hearted, she was driven from him.

Now, that she had time to reflect, she realized that her running away, something she always thought that she was far too level-headed to even contemplate, was perhaps the most audacious thing she had ever done, of late. But now, she was haunted by a small regret, that maybe her leaving was a bad idea, somehow. The last act of a desperate child.

Across the table from the forlorn girl, a teenaged boy wearing a skull-and-crossbones T-shirt, sat, placing his closed laptop, that he used as a tray for his lunch, down on the table.

Marcie wasn't in the mood to interact with anyone, and hoped that he wouldn't start some inane conversation with her. Her hope was soon dashed.

"You're Marcie Fleach, right?" he asked.

Marcie lifted her eyes from studying her food at the sound of her name, and gave a quick look at him. A spark of recognition flashed in her mind at the sight of him. He was in one of her classes, but she decided that it wasn't worth her reaction.

"You should know," she said, quietly. "We go to Homeroom together. Congratulations, though. You just proved that I'm not that invisible there, after all, although, I didn't see _you_ there today. Did you come to school late?"

The boy nodded. "Yeah, but I had a good reason for that."

He slid aside his lunch from atop his laptop and opened it, displaying to Marcie, a red and black website, adorned with a skull-and-crossbones motif.

"As you may know," he announced himself. "I run a very popular horror movie blog under the name GoreGuru86."

"Vaguely," Marcie muttered.

"Well, maybe you should look into more, because you're a part of it," he said, simply.

Suspicion made one of her eyebrows rise. "What do you mean?"

He pointed to a link on the screen. "There's a section in my blog called _Local Lunatics_ -"

Marcie raised her hand to stop him. With her perennial ill favor among classmates, she knew where this was going. "Don't tell me. _I'm_ the Local Lunatic, right?"

The boy raised _his_ hand to placate her. "No! No! The Lunatics are all of those crazy, costumed kooks that you helped put away. I followed all of your cases. Or rather, I've followed _you_ on all of your cases."

She confessed inwardly that she was far too busy on those cases to think that she was ever shadowed. That he was able to gather enough information from spying on her to fill his blog, was noteworthy, but suspect.

"You're good. I never even noticed you," she complimented, sarcastically, then deadpanned, "Or your blog." She rolled her eyes up, exasperated. "My first stalker. Great"

He shook his head. "No, it's not like that. I've known about you ever since your first case with The Ringleader. Been blogging your exploits ever since."

 _'A nice gesture, I guess.'_ she thought, begrudgingly. _'Certainly one not to be punished by my bad mood.'_

"I guess I should be flattered. Sorry for being so catty," she sighed, guiltily. "I just got a lot on my mind. Anyway, did you want me for something?"

"Yeah. Remember when I said that there was a good reason why I was late today? Here's the reason. Crystal Cove Studios is doing this new big-budget horror movie that's starring two of the biggest names together for the first time. Of course, you'd know this if you'd read my recent blog-"

"Focus," Marcie reminded him.

"Oh! Well, anyway, the director was kidnapped by some clown who calls himself Doctor Darkfang. Said he did it to save the production, some junk. I've been talking with the police about it all morning."

"So, what does this have to do with you being late?"

"Because the director's...my dad."

Marcie straightened up when she heard that. However down she might have felt earlier, she couldn't ignore a direct plea for help given to her, out of hand.

"I'll...see if I can look into it," she replied with an uncertain look.

The boy, then, slide over a sealed envelope towards her. One marked with a single red letter in its center. M.

"This was left in his trailer. It was the only clue there," he said. "Read this, and please find him for me."

Marcie picked up the envelope, and thoughtfully rubbed it between thumb and slim forefinger. She was slightly tempted to know what it read, but she also didn't want to open it, right away.

To do so, would be to confirm to the boy that she would take the case, and she already made no promises. She wondered if she was even in the right frame of mind to tackle this.

With a sigh, she continued rubbing the missive, and inwardly debating with herself, until lunch period finally ended.

* * *

In Velma's bedroom, Marcie was attempted to do her homework, and, once again, she was thoroughly distracted by everything.

Over the nights that The Dinkleys allowed her the use of their daughter's bedroom, and she experienced, again, the soft, familiar comfort of Velma's four-poster bed, a sweet, festering melancholy returned to her, a longing she continued to fight feebly with some pseudo-pragmatism that failed her more often than not.

A wistful desire that she hadn't felt since she was caught in the bedroom, months before, under the blind thrall of The Ringleader.

Coupled with her conflicting feelings about her and her father, Marcie felt as though she were a roiling ball of confusion clothed in human skin.

She closed her school book and her eyes in a effort to calm herself. Math could certainly wait.

She slipped off the bed, and walked over to the dresser where her framed photo of Velma stood. She picked it up, and just stared at it. She didn't want to break her own spell of introspection by speaking to it. The power of her feelings, of her wants, of her worry, was strong enough.

Marcie backed up until she felt the bed against her legs, and sat down on it, again. With her back to the doorway, she never noticed Mrs. Dinkley silently watching Marcie pine for her daughter.

"We miss her, too," Mrs. Dinkley admitted quietly.

With a slight start, Marcie placed the picture face down on her lap, hiding its subject. "Sorry, Mrs. D," she said.

"Don't be, dear," Angie told her. "I just came by to see how you were doing. How _are_ you doing, by the way?"

Whether it was parental prying or not, Marcie was too tired from her daily spar with her emotions to bring her guard up. Besides, she knew enough about Angie Dinkley from Velma to know that any information she wanted to obtain from anyone or anything, would be obtained in due course.

"I'm...okay, I guess. I think the toughest thing I ever did was call my dad from here, just to let him know that I was okay."

"Hmm. I don't know your father very well," Angie commented. "But I always thought he was a level-headed, even-handed man."

"He was," Marcie sighed in agreement. "In his own way. I didn't agree with what he wanted me to be, but I tried so hard to reach out to him, anyway, especially, when he was having problems at work. I guess when I called the house, I was _still_ trying to reach out to him. I know that I'll have to patch things up with him, eventually, and come back home, if only because I don't want to impose on you and Mr. D's hospitality any longer than I have."

Angie lifted a disapproving finger. "Ah! I'll hear none of that. You can stay for as long as you like, Marcie. With Velma gone, I have to admit that you've...become the closest thing to a daughter to me."

With Marcie losing her own mother, yet again, and hearing this, she didn't know whether to smile or cry. "Thank you, Mrs. D. By the way, did my father...ever call me back?"

Angie shrugged. "I'm sorry, dear. We haven't gotten any calls from him, at all." She then saw Marcie's crestfallen sag.

"But that doesn't mean he's not thinking about you," she continued, quickly. "I refuse to believe that he doesn't care about you."

That was a thought too painful, if not too frightening, to ponder. Not caring about her? Not be father enough to be worried about where she might have run off to? To...cut her off?

Marcie shook the fear from her head and quickly changed the subject.

For conversation's sake, Marcie said, "I bet you and V must have had your spats, at one time, too." She already knew, from Velma, privately, about the disagreements she and Mrs. Dinkley would go through.

"Oh, yes, we had our share of roof-raisers," Angie admitted with a wistful smile. "But my Velma's young, and that's to be expected. I'd almost worry if she _didn't_ rebel a little bit."

"Has she ever gotten in touch with you, lately?" Marcie asked, sincerely. "I tried to keep in touch, for a while, but she told me that she had to stop corresponding for a while." Marcie made sure not to say _why_ Velma had to go incommunicado, for fear of worrying her mother. It was obvious that she was worried enough.

Now, it was Angie's turn to feel crestfallen, as she shook her head. "No. Dale and I haven't heard from her since she left home. I wish she would have told me where she was going, but she left home so fast..."

Marcie regarded her words. She left _home_ , not _...the house._ Therein was the difference.

She looked up into Mrs. Dinkley's eyes, and for the first time, she saw the mother who stop trying to conceal her frustration and concern with cool and worldly wisdom. It didn't matter how many friends Velma had in tow, to Mrs. Dinkley, her child was _out there_ , and she was helpless to learn any more than that.

Marcie wordlessly stood up from the bed, walked over to the doorway, and gently hugged Mrs. Dinkley.

The gesture surprised the bespectacled mother. "What was that for?" Angie asked.

"It looked like needed it, ma'am."

"Thank you, dear," said the mother, understanding, and holding back a pang of inner pain.

"No problem, Mrs. D," Marcie assured her, releasing the hold.

Looking past Marcie to the books on the bed, Angie asked, "What's that, dear?"

"Huh?"

"The envelope on the bed, underneath your school books."

And thus, the secret of Angie Dinkley's ability to ferret out info was revealed to Marcie. She was hyper-observant. Something to consider.

"Oh, that's some letter a boy, in school, gave to me, today."

Angie gave Marcie a knowing look. "An admirer?" she asked.

"No way, Mrs. D!" Marcie said, perhaps a bit too defensively. "He said that his father, a movie director in town, was kidnapped during a shoot. He wants me to find him."

"Well, that's wonderful," said Angie, then realized how that might have sounded. "I mean, it's wonderful that you have something to do to occupy your mind for a while."

"What do you mean? I haven't made up my mind on taking the case, yet."

The maternal side of Angie Dinkley son rose to the fore with a wag of her finger. "Marcie Fleach, it's nice that you've a made a name for yourself, in town, as an amateur detective. I don't think we ever had that before, but you need to take your mind off of all of these troubles. At home…and here."

Marcie looked down in sober consideration.

"Besides, as Mary Shelley once said," Angie continued. "'Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose.'"

 _'Maybe Mrs. D's right,'_ Marcie thought. _'Maybe I_ do _need to get my mind off of things for a while. Let them sort themselves out, instead of me trying to fix them, for a change.'_

"Thanks, Mrs. D. I might just do that," Marcie finally conceded. "But I don't think the author of Frankenstein had to go through what I did."

Angie walked out of the bedroom and gave Marcie a knowing wink. "Oh, you'd be surprised. Now, come downstairs. It's almost time for dinner."

* * *

The atmospheric tympani of an approaching storm could be heard faintly in the distance, the dark clouds slowly stretched over the evening sky, like a grey blanket pulled across a vast, night-blue bed.

At the dinning room table, dinner went by pleasantly, and Dale Dinkley leaned back in his chair, patting his belly, satisfied at the end of a full meal. "Another stellar dinner, darling. As usual, the best pork chops in the state."

"Oh, you," Angie cooed from her spot at the table, as Marcie walked around it, collecting the used plates. A slight rumble of thunder could be heard overhead. "Looks like we're in for a stormy night."

Marcie agreed, and thought of her convertible, with its open interior, soon to be exposed to the harsh elements. She put the pile of plates on the table.

"I'll wash the dishes in a little bit, Mr. and Mrs. D, but can I run outside, first, and put the top up on my car?"

"Of course, dear," Angie said, then bade her, "But hurry back before it rains."

Walking past the man of the house, Marcie asked, conversationally, to Dale, "Best chops in the state, huh?"

"It's true," he said, with a sated smile. "One of the many reasons I married her."

"Could ask a question, then?" Marcie asked, again, this time, with a puckish look.

"Ask away."

She reached the front door, and asked before stepping through it, "Is it true that when you guys got married, you took _Mrs. D's_ name?"

For the first time that evening, Dale was at a loss for words. "Well...uh…I…" he muttered, to Marcie's satisfaction, then she closed the door.

Slightly embarrassed, Dale turned to Angie. "You told her about that?"

Angie shrugged in guilty pleasure.

* * *

Marcie hadn't notice the black limousine parked across the street, as she left the house, and skipped towards the open-topped Clue Cruiser, the first cooling sprinkles of rain falling on her cheek.

It felt good, as she stepped into her car, started the ignition, and hit the switch to raise the convertible's cloth roof.

Two tall shadowy figures walked from the limo.

After she rolled up the windows, and left the car, she turned her back to the limo to lock the door, and only then, noticed the twin shadows falling upon her.

She turned in reaction to them, regretting the fact that she wasn't carrying any of her capsules or flasks. Her only chance of surviving whatever came her way was in the fact that she wasn't too far from the house. If she was quick and slippery enough, she could make it.

Upon gazing at the sober faces of the figures, their stern visages wiped away any thought or hope of escape for her. Because she couldn't believe the luck of who had graced her path.

"Vincent…Van Ghoul?" Marcie gasped in shock. She looked over to the austere, more older gentleman beside him, and was stunned. This was what the boy in the cafeteria was talking about when he said who was starring in the now stalled movie.

"Are you…"

"Yes, I know what you are about to say," sounded the tempered, yet amused, voice. So deep, English, and stentorian was its tone, that Marcie almost wilted underneath the weight of its authority.

"Just remember, when it comes to horror, my child, no one is more horrible than..." A roar of thunder overhead arrived with perfect timing. " _Christopher Bleed!_ "

Vincent only sighed and rolled up his eyes. "Ugh! You've got that right."


	2. 2

_2~_

Despite the thundering outside, everyone gathered and was seated in the living room. It wasn't everyday, or night, that such company was given hospitality, and from Marcie's eyes, in the weighty presence of that company, the humble living room, was made humbler, still.

Mr. and Mrs. Dinkley, ironically, shared the more roomier couch, Marcie, the love seat, and Vincent and Christopher, looking uncomfortable, while heroically trying to look otherwise, shared the sofa.

"Vincent! Mr. Bleed!," Angie gushed beside her more sedate, yet, flabbergasted husband. "Oh, if knew you were coming over, I would have made places for you at dinner."

Van Ghoul, being the more social and easy-going of the pair, waved the gesture away with a smile that shone behind his thin moustache. "Oh, that all right, Mrs. Dinkley."

"Please, you know that you can call me Angie."

"Angie, of course," Vincent charmingly amended.

As an observer, Marcie was surprised at the casual interplay between celebrity and little person. She enjoyed the odd horror classic from both men, over the years, and could understand the pause that they could command when they entered a room, but it was, nonetheless, fascinating to see these two conversing on a friendly, non-fawning, first-name basis.

Studying Christopher, however, she had the sense that he didn't go to many parties. His dour, no-nonsense glare at everyone in the living room, gave her and Mr. Dinkley, the impression that they were walking on eggshells trying to please him, and was failing, badly.

Perhaps, it was because of the urgency of the visit, or maybe, it was his natural expression. Whatever the case, Marcie could begin to see the subtle maintenance of balance being played out before her. His imperious look, which would have probably brought the room down, was being countered, effortlessly, by the, just as natural, ebullience of Angie, as she entertained.

"How do you two know each other?" Marcie asked Angie, finally.

The woman regarded the teen, saying, "Oh, well, Mr. Bleed, I know by reputation, but I knew Vincent back when Crystal Cove Studios hired me to be a technical consultant on one of his movies. I couldn't stay long, however. Disagreements with the higher-ups, y'know."

Strange tales of Angie's earlier days always intrigued Marcie, and tonight's little tale would be no different.

"Over pay?" Marcie guessed, wondering how Angie might have dealt with the big fish of the Entertainment Industry.

Angie shook her head, slightly. "No, my dear. _Authenticity_. You see, I wanted to use a few passages from my copy of The Necronomicon, for the sake of realism, but Albrecht J. Schwartz, the owner of the studio, said that he wasn't insured against dark magic, or some such thing. I told him that I was only going to use passages that I knew were safe, but the man still wouldn't budge. So, in a huff, I left."

"Rumor on the set was that you used a spell to turn his office wallpaper plaid," Vincent said with wistful conspiracy.

"Well, they were wrong," corrected Angie, then said, slyly, "It was actually polka-dot."

"Apologies, Mrs. Dinkley, but time is truly of the essence," Bleed said.

"Angie. That goes for you, too."

"Oh, don't mind Ol' Fuddy-Duddy, over here," Vincent dismissed his partner. "He's trying to tell you what's...at _stake_!"

Together, The Dinkleys chuckled, and Marcie could help but smile at that. A joke at the exasperated Bleed's expense, from his years at playing as The Dark Count. It was sorely needed to liven things up from his end, despite their reason for being there.

A little voice in Marcie suggested that she join in the fun, and she couldn't believe herself when she did.

"He's trying to get to the... _heart_...of the matter!" she joked.

"If we're all finished, I would like to continue," Bleed muttered, pointing a pale, bony finger at Marcie. "We were set by the studio for this child. Apparently, the blackguard who stole our director means to toy with us by suggesting that he can be found with her help."

"Then you've come to the right person, then, " Angie said. "Marcie has been helping the police catch some of the craftiest criminals in town, for a while, now." She gave the girl a glance of assurance. "I'm sure that if anyone can find your missing director, she can."

"Thanks, Mrs. D," Marcie said, soberly, for the verbal vote of confidence, and the friendly push to take the case.

She reached into her wool jacket, and pulled out the folded, unopened envelope. "Uh, it wouldn't have anything to do with this, would it?"

Vincent's lined eyes widened. "Then you _do_ have it. What did it say?"

"I don't know. I didn't open it, yet," Marcie explained.

"Well, go on! Open it!" he urged her. "The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can get on with my next big project."

"As usual, Vincent," Christopher sniffed. "You view your work as a series of mere jobs, and not as the series of masterpieces that it _could_ have been."

"What do you mean, "... _could_ have been?"" asked Vincent, stiffened by the comment. " _All_ of my films are classics, unlike those abstract moments of surrealism from that English studio you work for."

"Anvil Studios is a beacon of quality in the world of cinema. I will not have you sully its name with your mewling prattle," Bleed defended.

"Sorry," said Vincent, simply. "I meant to sully _your_ name."

"Settle down," Marcie told them, bewildered at the weird sight the bickering of the otherwise professional, well-known actors were displaying. The disheartening thought that they may actually have been celebrity impersonators, and this so-called "case", an elaborately crafted prank, struck her deep, for a moment. "I'll read the letter."

 _'Anything to stop all of this yakking,'_ she thought.

 _"Dear Marcie Fleach,_

 _You may call me Doctor Darkfang. The word is that you have made quite the name for yourself in Crystal Cove as its first, if only, amateur detective. Please, permit me to challenge that reputation by daring you to solve my crime. I have kidnapped the director of the upcoming film, "?" A terrible title, by the way, even if it is a working one. Anyway, I did this deed, as I will tell the studio, soon, to save this production._

 _However, this is only the first part of my mighty test..."_

 _Opinionated egotist_ was the first estimation of the writer in Marcie's mind after reading just that much of the letter, and only _now_ getting any information from it.

She rolled her eyes at the written diatribe. "Ugh! I wonder if he's this long-winded when he talks, too." Then, she continued.

 _"You must solve this case while having the two stars, Christopher Bleed and Vincent Van Ghoul, assist you. You will never know where, or when, I will strike to keep you off the case, but I_ will _know if those two are not by your side while you're sleuthing. You will have until the end of the week to find my prey and vanquish me. If not, then Crystal Cove shall be spared my presence, for I, and the director, shall never be heard from again."_

Marcie sat back in the love seat, deep in thought. "Hmm, that's strange. No ransom, or anything?"

She thought of the actors, and glanced at them with concern. They would slow her down, obviously. How to broach the subject of their age without being disrespectful?

"Look, I know the note said that you two would have to come with me, but I'd understand if you don't want to," she offered. "It might be hard for you to keep up. Y'know, because of your age, and all."

"Nonsense," Christopher huffed, defensively, straightening up on the couch. "Despite my age, I am just as hale and hearty as I was in my film, _Barking II: Your Uncle Has Fleas._ Now, _that_ was grueling shoot."

Not to be outdone, Vincent spoke up. "Likewise, and my role in _The Abysmal Dr. Vibes_ was far more demanding than yours. Not to mention the fact that I _am_ younger than you."

"As if _that_ were an issue."

"Gentlemen, you're missing the point," Marcie said. "You're talking about shoots and movies you've done. Running around town looking for clues, and escaping from deathtraps, is not the same thing as acting. Look, I may not be Sheriff Stone's favorite these days, but maybe we should let the police handle it."

Because a teenager was telling them these things, she knew that their collective pride would be bruised, but it was for the best. From her perspective, she learned that amateur detecting was not only a somewhat dangerous game for the young, but, at times, a full-contact sport.

"You read the letter, Miss Fleach. Would you bring this matter up with the police, knowing that you risk the safety of an innocent man?" Bleed asked her.

The way he asked her, the sound of his voice, made the plea sound more like a challenge that she would have been foolhardy to accept. She shook her head.

Plus, he had a point. Regardless of what she thought of this Doctor Darkfang, she couldn't call his bluff that the director wouldn't be seen again, if she didn't comply. His life was in her hands, a truth that was both intoxicating and frightening.

Vincent brightened at the prospect of such an adventure. "Then it's settled. We'll go out on this crazy case with you. However, I do have one important question to ask before we shove off."

"Which is?" she asked.

"Why was Bleed's name written first in the letter? I mean, I know that it's in alphabetical order, and such, but what about star billing?" he complained.

"You obviously think that your star can outshine my own, in comparison. The audacity." Bleed harangued.

As Marcie's distracted mind attempted to hammer out a plan of attack amidst the childish squabbling of the two actors, she could only applaud Darkfang's twisted cunning in forcing her to drag them all over town, while she tried, desperately, to deduce anything.

Applaud, and then, sigh.

The phone rang from the kitchen, and, to clear her head from the distracting duo, Marcie beat a hasty retreat there.

She reached the receiver by the third ring. "Hello?"

A woman's voice was heard on the other end. "Hello. May I speak to Marcie Fleach?"

"Speaking."

"Mr. Schwartz, the president of Crystal Cove Studios would like to see you at around six, this evening. Would that be possible?"

Marcie thought about how The Dinkleys might take that. Would they allow her to cruise the streets at night looking for clues?

"I think I can make it," she told the woman.

Oh, good. I'll tell him to that you'll be on your way. My name is Delores, by the way. I'm Mr. Schwartz's secretary."

"Okay, Delores. I'll be there."

"Alight, then. Bye."

"Bye."

When Marcie returned to the living room, Dale Dinkley was the first to ask, "Who was on the phone, Marcie?"

"The secretary of your Mrs. D's old friend, Mr. Schwartz. He wants to see me around six. Probably about all of this. You guys don't mind me going, do you?"

Husband and wife collectively thought on the matter, weighing the elements of the matter. They weren't her parents, but were the closest thing to watchful guardians for her, at the moment. Although it was still dark out, it was only because of the overcast settling across the waning daylight of early evening.

The time it was taking to come to a decision was worrying Marcie. As a child, she knew all too well that if a parent was taking this long to decide, often, it was because they were more hung up on the negatives than the positives of a thing. She had to speak up with a decider.

"The letter said that Mr. Bleed and Mr. Van Ghoul had to be with me during the case, so they can look after me while I'm out there."

"Hmmm..." The Dinkleys said in unison. Then, they glanced at each other, giving one another the silent sign of choice and ultimate agreement.

"All right, Marcie," Angie declared. "We'll let you go out to solve this mystery, but this is still a school night. You'll have to come home at ten o'clock sharp."

Marcie beamed them a relieved smile, then skipped towards the front door. "Ten sharp. I gotcha, Mrs. D."

The two actors got up from their seat, and walked over to the door at a speed that was far too sedate for her.

"C'mon, guys, shake a leg! The sooner we get to the studio, the sooner we can crack this case!" Marcie goaded on her way to her car.

Both men sighed at Marcie's impetuousness as they left the house.

"Oh, youth!" Bleed intoned. "All haste, and yet, going nowhere."

"Tell me about it," Vincent muttered in agreement.

* * *

"Hello, Mr. Schwartz. I'm Marcie Fleach," she introduced herself to the standing studio head, when she, Bleed, and Van Ghoul entered his office, at the top of the six o'clock hour. "My friends and I cracked that case about Hunter X for you, a few months back,"

"Sorry?"

"Hunter X?" she reminded him. "We found out that it was his creator, Harvard Dole, who was disguised as him. He wanted to destroy your studio to get back at you for canceling his show."

"Hmm...Doesn't ring a bell."

"You didn't pay any of us," she sighed.

"It's good to see you, again, Marcie," he said, his eyes suddenly alight with recognition, and heartily shaking the girl's hand. He, then, nodded to the two men beside her, in curt greeting. "Vince. Chris, I know you're on loan from Anvil Studios, so, how are you liking things over here?"

Bleed gave a disdainful glance at Vincent, confessing, "I have no serious complaints, however, things could be _better_ , Mr. Schwartz."

"Wonderful," said the president, not truly caring, one way, or the other, how Christopher really felt. He sat back down in his leather chair, and regarded them with a kind of savvy sobriety that came with being in the entertainment business.

"I'm sorry to have you come by here so soon," he apologized. "But I wanted to catch you before you started on this case. The director's kid told us that he found a note in his father's trailer, and then gave it to you, but not before that whacko doctor showed up, told us that he was the kidnapper, and that he was doing all of this to save the picture, if you can believe that."

Marcie shrugged. "That's what we know, so far."

"Well, what did the note say?" he asked.

"Essentially, that Mr. Van Ghoul and Mr. Bleed have to work with me on this case, and I can't call the police," Marcie related. "Or we'll never see the director again."

Albrecht's expression brightened. "Well, that's great!"

"Uh...I don't follow, sir," Marcie said, confused, which Albrecht could see.

"Oh, I mean the "no police" part," he quickly amended. "See, I was thinking about calling them myself, but this is better. No cops means no press. Believe it, or not, but Hollywood thinks we're all just second-stringers, around here. But this studio sunk a lot of money into this picture. If word of this kidnapping gets out, the scandal alone could bury us. Our PR department's good, but not _that_ good. Find the director, and keep this quiet. Make it happen, and I could make it worth your while."

Marcie's eyes lit up, suspiciously. "You mean you might pay me?" It was never about money, she knew. She hadn't asked for, so far, but she was curious if he would, anyway. It certainly didn't hurt.

The man suddenly looked slightly stricken and ill. "Uh, not really. But think of the pull you'll get in this town, when people know you've helped Albrecht J. Schwartz, president of Crystal Cove Studios."

"Well, with motivation like that, how can I say no?" Marcie remarked with a sarcastic smirk.

The studio head looked to her, this time, with earnest seriousness in his jaded eyes. "Just find the director, or this clown who took him. If you do, you can get the information out of him. You've got one week to get it done, or _we're_ done, understand."

"Done and done," she said.

"Okay, people, we're done, here," Albrecht said, dismissing them.

Marcie gave a slight look of offense concerning the man, as she and the two men began to leave the office. She could tell from his bearing that he was a man who took charge, but he gave such an unreasonable air around her, and probably, those who worked under him, that she starting to wonder if Darkfang was telling the truth when he said that he was trying to save the production, perhaps from its president.

The office door closed, leaving Albrecht to his thoughts. He swiveled his seat around so he could gaze out the window behind his desk, then the door opened once more.

Vincent stuck his head back in and sang out, "Dun-dun-dunnn!" as a joke.

"Beat it, Van Ghoul, or your career'll be dun-dun-dun-done _for_ ," Albrecht warned without turning to look at him. He knew he wanted attention, and so, would not satisfy him.

"Sorry, sir. Won't happen again."

"Actors," the president sighed, as the door closed again.

* * *

The trailer door opened with a much-needed oiling and Marcie peered in. Nothing seemed out of place. Nothing looked knocked over, or showed signs of a struggle since the abduction, to her relief.

A deputy once told her during one of her Sheriff-sponsored "visits" to the police station, that sometimes clues, like milk, had expiration dates, that the sooner you looked for them and found them, the easier a time you had with the investigation.

Marcie tried to live by those words she had told her, as she carefully walked through the vehicle to start her search.

From its size and design, this was one of the fancier models of trailer, well-suited to a man of the director's obvious taste and opinion of himself.

It was partitioned into sections. In the rear was the sleeping cabin, before that, the kitchenette/dinning area, before that, the relatively longer living room/lounge area, and then the foyer/entrance.

Marcie gingerly moved personal effects aside and studied the odd knick-knack while she checked the bedroom. When that yielded nothing, she perused the next section, carefully. When nothing could be learned from there, she began to hunt through the living room, with slow deliberation.

Here, the man had shelving put up to display copies to the awards he sheltered at home. Gold and silver medallions and statuettes to a lifetime of service to the movie industry. Photos of friends, actors he worked with, over the years, and family. Most notably, the room was dominated by his lavish entertainment center, which took up space on one side of the room at a decadent degree.

The light scent of alcohol was noticed, here, as well. Marcie turned to where it was strongest, and saw the abandoned bottle of liquor on the couch, along with the still-filled shot glass on the couch's table.

"Didn't even get a chance to finish his drink," Marcie said to herself, before she noticed something about the place that nagged at her ever since she walked through it. It was quite dim.

"Where are the lights? It's way too dark in here for me to find anything," she groused, looking around the room from where she stood, and not finding a light switch, anywhere. She had noticed the windows in the center of this section, however.

Walking over to the one on the left, Marcie parted its small set of curtains to let in what little daylight was still available, which did illuminate the room, somewhat, and also brought something to her attention.

Sitting on one end of the window sill was a speaker, facing the window. It was the inexpensive kind one could get at some corner dollar store, tiny and housed in cheap, black plastic, with a thin cord dangling from its back and off the sill, like an impotent tail, and not plugged into anything.

It sharply stood out in her mind against what she saw of the director's choice in decor, and his entertainment center. "Some sound system." Marcie joked, before turned away to continue her search. "You can't hear much with the speakers facing out."

Then, she froze, herself, illuminated.

"Wait a minute," she mused, turning back to the window. "What kind of director, with his salary and taste, want with some rinky-dink speakers? He's got a way better sound system. And why were they pointed _out_? They were used for something else, but what?"

Marcie reached into her inner jacket pocket, pulled out her cell phone, and, with its built-in camera, took a snapshot of the window sill and the speaker.

* * *

It started as a mist. Grey-white fingers of vapor crept along the periphery of the trailer's parking space, thickening, as the moments passed, and unnoticed by the two elderly men who waited outside by the trailer's entrance, seated on folding chairs.

Vincent gave a shiver, as he felt the already wet air of the weather, grow a little colder, and seep into his bones.

"Whew! It's getting a bit nippy out here. Maybe we should join Marcie in the trailer," he suggested to his co-worker.

"What's the matter, Van Ghoul," Bleed sniffed. "Afraid of catching your death of cold? In any event, we can't go in until Miss Fleach has finished looking for clues inside."

"Well, surely, she should be done, by now," Vincent moaned. "Oh, if I knew it would be _this_ cold and damp, I would have bundled up. What I wouldn't give for a hot toddy, right now."

So wrapped up in their conversation, neither men noticed the mists rising and solidifying into a towering, nebulous fog bank, strategically placed around the trailer and the two men.

"A hot toddy will not help you, Vincent Van Fool!" came a voice that seemed to come from all around them, bouncing off of, and echoing within the depths of the earthbound cloud.

Christopher chuckled upon hearing that. "I'm keeping that one." Then, he realized the danger.

Both actors stood from their chairs in alert trepidation. Van Ghoul, in particular, was keenly aware that the threat focused on him, specifically.

"Wh-Who are you?" Vincent choked out a question, eyes furtively watching the cloud bank for any sign of attack. Then, his eyes caught the movement of a shadow flowing from within the fog, and locked on it.

The silhouette gradually grew darker and more sharper in focus, as a figure strolled out of the mists, a vampiric visage watching Van Ghoul's fright with calm bemusement, clad in an old style doctor's uniform.

"Why, you may call me Darkfang. _Doctor_ Darkfang, menacing master of mysticism and the occult, if you please," the mysterious person introduced himself. "And I have come to give you a message to tell that intern who thinks she's a surgeon."

"A-And that...is?" Vincent asked, knowing who he meant.

Darkfang pointed a rubbed gloved finger at the duo. "Stay away from this case, all of you, or the director will come down with something far worse than the common cold. Doctor's orders. And just to make sure that you understand. I'll leave you a prescription...for terror!"

With a flourish of his arms, Darkfang lifted his eyes to the lead skies and bellowed, "I call upon you, specters of the air! You dancing, deceased, demons of despair! Bound by grief, by spell, by tome! I free you from Hill's Haunted Rest Home!"

"Hill's Haunted Rest Home?" Vincent's mused, his fear was alleviated for a moment by a memory, but then his terror returned to him two-fold when he saw, as if separating from the very stuff of the fog, the ethereal forms of ghosts, moaning angrily.

At first, they showed up, two at a time, but soon, their numbers tripled, and they circled around the alarmed men and the trailer, purposely flying close enough to make poor Van Ghoul jump back in fright at a fly-by.

"I picked the wrong day to not wear adult diapers!" Vincent yelled, as he bolted inside the trailer, startling Marcie.

"Oh, sorry I forgot to tell you guys that I was finished. You can come in, now. I was just trying to figure out what I found," she explained, then, she saw Vincent's haggard look, and asked him, "What's going on?"

"Monster! Fog! Stay away!" he tried to convey to her in his frazzled condition. "Ghosts!"

"Ghosts?" Marcie asked back, a little skepticism tinting her word.

"What the blathering fool is trying to say," Christopher said, entering and closing the door behind him. "Is that a Doctor Darkfang is out there, threatening you off the case with ghosts he could apparently summon."

"There are no such things as ghosts, people," Marcie said, walking over to the front door. "But I want to check out this Doctor Darkfang. It always helps me size up an opponent, if I get a good look at him, first." She never made it to the door.

The trailer suddenly heaved upwards so hard that it tumbled ever occupant to the floor with a crash.

"What the devil..." Christopher muttered, as he steadied himself on his hands and knees.

"Earthquake!" Vincent screamed while he crawled to the dubious stability of one of the nearby couch's legs. "We're in California, so, it's gotta be...earthquake!"

Marcie was bounced back towards the middle of the trailer, where the incriminating window was positioned. As she slowly stood back up on unsteady legs, she could feel the sensation of an impossible ascent!

She lunged over to the window, which was now free of its tiny speaker, and looked out. For a moment, fear gripped her stomach, as she could see, through gaps in the rising column of fog and the strafing runs of apparitions, the vista of Crystal Cove Studios under a thundering heaven.

Marcie backed away from the window, and had to sit down on the couch to keep from falling, due to weak knees.

"Hey, Chicken Little," she said to a cowering Van Ghoul. "Good news. It's not an earthquake."

"I-It's not?"

"Nope. We're just, literally, in that great, big trailer in the sky."

"In the sky? You mean, we're...fl-fl-flying?" Vincent sputtered.

"Well, actually, we're hovering." Marcie corrected. "Though I don't know if it's these, so-called, ghosts that are doing it, or Doctor Darkfang-"

"Who cares who's doing it! We have to get back down, again!" he yelled. It became apparent that Marcie's correction didn't assuage his fears, any.

"You have to calm down, sir," Marcie reasoned.

"Oh, why couldn't this just happen to _Bleed_?" he whined.

"I'm here, too, you cringing jackanape!" Bleed angrily reminded him from his position on the floor. "Miss Fleach, could you help me up?"

"Sure thing," Marcie told him, walking carefully towards the entrance, cautious of any more jarring movements.

Putting her arm around his shoulder and grasping his arm, she soon had the elderly actor back on his feet and walked over to the couch, where he sat down, gratefully. Marcie, then, strolled around, deep in thought, where he fell, near the trailer's entrance.

"Hmm..." she pondered. "How is he doing this? _Why_ is he doing this?"

Before another word was said, however, the trailer violently yawed, throwing captives and everything not attached to the floor, to the left of the vehicle.

Except for Marcie, who had the poor fortune of standing by the front door. Balance wildly left her, and she stumbled backwards into the closed door, ramming it open with her weight and momentum. There was only the briefest of yelps, and she was gone.

At least, to the point of views of the two men who were partially buried beneath furniture, furnishings, utensils, and knick-knacks at the center of the trailer.

"Marcie!" Bleed and Van Ghoul cried, as wind-swept fog, lit with the flashes of lightning and glowing ghosts flying by, marked her passage.

"I'm telling her family that _you_ didn't lock the door," Vincent said, childishly.

Both men sat in the debris, weighed more by the trust that was broken, than the garbage that settled on their weary shoulders. If they could escape this, then what? Summon the courage to find Marcie's shattered body somewhere on the studio grounds? Make the long drive back to The Dinkleys, and give them the saddest, truest words any actor had to give?

With the front door wide open, the tempest, outside, roared, mocking their efforts and their pain. To Bleed, who considered himself the more imaginative of the two, he could swear that the wind was laughing at his suffering.

Or calling his name? In his old age, he would never admit publicly that he might be hearing things, but, for right now, he could swear that he heard...a human voice in the wind.

"Wait," Bleed said, leaning his ears to catch more of that elusive sound.

Again, he heard it, but not laughing, derisively. It was a plaintive sound...like a song...or a yell.

"Get up, Van Ghoul!" he commanded, gathering his strength to rise and shake the junk off of him in haste. "Hurry! She's still alive!"

Bleed stumbled forward through the trailer's acute angle of rest, wading through loose personal effects to reach the entrance, Vincent close behind.

Carefully peering down the open doorway, they could see the chaos of the mini-maelstrom blowing in, but it wasn't until they found something to hold on to, and crouched low enough to see past the threshold, could they see a miracle.

Below, hanging on to the door handle, by nothing short of a death grip, was Marcie, swaying heavily from the front door, tousled by the winds.

"Help!" she yelled through the storm.

"What do you want us to do?" Vincent asked, doing his level best to beat down his own rising panic.

"Get a…rope, or cord from inside!" she instructed with a grunt of effort. "Anything! The handle's too small. I can't hold on for...long!"

Vincent retreated back into the trailer, fishing through the heaviest piles of debris for something to make a makeshift lariat out of.

Meanwhile, Bleed remained to keep Marcie company and to get her to focus on maintaining her hold.

"Hold on, Miss Fleach!" he told her. "Help is coming! Even if it is from _him_ , it's coming!"

"I'm...trying!" she said, shakily, her finger cramping to the bone, and desperately needing something to take her mind off of the pain. "Tell me...a story!"

Christopher gave a wistful smile, in spite of the circumstances. "Ah, my child! I could tell you such stories. I was descended from royalty, you know?"

"Really?"

"Oh, yes. I even fought like a lion in The Great War, and let me tell you something, Miss Fleach, I was no stranger to danger and death. I looked into _your_ eyes, and I saw that you are the same, and so, if I can come out of that, and become the exalted actor that I am, than you, Marcie Fleach, can do no less than... _Christopher Bleed_!"

Again, that voice, that commanding voice, gave Marcie the impetus to do whatever he asked of her, even if her body rebelled. She soon began to show signs of a plan hatching, when she began swinging her body in and out, to sway the door more widely, which, from Bleed's vantage point, confused him.

"Miss Fleach, what are you doing?" he asked, hoping he could help in some way.

"You're...right!" she grunted. "I _can_ make it. I...did it...before, and I can-"

Whatever was said, or done, next, was drowned out in an electric-blue flash of lightning, overhead, and a terrible boom of thunder that rattled the trailer's windows, and threatened to steal Christopher's hearing.

When Bleed's senses finally recovered, the girl was gone, and this time, there was no trace, or no sound, to give him hope, only a front door swinging freely.

"Marcie," a defeated Bleed muttered in mourning. Then, the trailer suddenly rolled to the right, throwing Christopher back inside, and slamming the Marcie-less front door closed, like a final punctuation to her death.

"Not...again," Vincent muttered to himself. "I feel like a sock...in a dryer." Upon seeing Bleed stumble back onto the still standing couch, alone, he managed to ask, "Where's Marcie?"

Bleed gripped one side of the couch, perhaps, more, from the pain of giving the bad news, than to steady himself.

"Vincent...she didn't make it, this time," he told him in a sepulchral tone. "I tried to lift her spirits up, but she couldn't hold on long enough. I'm sorry."

If it were any other instance, Vincent would have been crowing over the fact that the great Christopher Bleed said he was sorry about anything, but now, as he could numbly feel the trailer right itself, and sink back to Earth, his soul began its descent into sorrow, even more so.

' _Fate was cruel, to us, more than to any others,'_ Van Ghoul thought. The chance of that plucky girl being alive from her fall was snatched from them the moment they dared to hope. Images of grieving pseudo-parents, a funeral...and a future, vengeful lawsuit, prowled fiercely in the tangled thickets of Vincent's fretful mind, giving life to his greatest fears and worries.

Like an elevator bringing them down into the lowest level of Hell, the trailer settled down with a thump. Outside, the fog and the ghosts had begun to flee the scene, leaving only the mundane sight of the trailer lot.

Vincent gingerly opened the front door of the disheveled trailer, and stepped out, followed by an equally devastated Christopher.

At least, they looked that way to a waiting Marcie.

Although this level of scares and shocks did no good to their collective hearts, Bleed and Van Ghoul waved the concern aside, as they rushed over and hugged the teen, gratefully.

"How did you survive?" Bleed asked, looking at her again to make sure that it wasn't some mean-spirited, stress-based hallucination. "We thought you were dead!"

"I thought so, too," Marcie said. "Until I happened to notice how we hit the skies. Look under the trailer, guys."

Both men looked by the side of the trailer, and indeed, noticed a puddle of dark liquid extending from underneath the trailer's body.

Upon closer examination and a proper look under the vehicle, they could see a series of slightly leaky hydraulic pumps, piston arms, hoses, and ball-and-socket joints welded to the undercarriage, which themselves were resting on the folded, powerless bulk of a flat, extending scissor lift.

"The hydraulic gimbal system made the trailer rock, and the lift…lifted it. I saw the platform while I was hanging outside, so I swung over and climbed down it," explained Marcie.

"Thank goodness," Vincent breathed. "Now, there won't be any reason for the lawsuits."

Marcie gave the man a quizzical glance. "Uh-huh. Well, I don't know who this tricky "doctor" is," Marcie with some menace of her own. "But I can't wait to teach him the meaning of malpractice."


	3. 3

_3~_

The VW putted up the winding, gloomy street, made all the more so by the dead trees, strategically placed within the washed-out soil of the land across from Van Ghoul Manor, a towering Gothic manse that dominated the lonely, yet otherwise, well-heeled neighborhood.

Marcie stepped out of her car once she parked it behind Vincent's automobile, a classic hearse. She had never been to his home before, and, in fact, hadn't known that actors of his caliber had even set up residence here. The more out-of-the-way the home, the better, she supposed, as she approached the weathered oak front doors and knocked.

The doors parted with a ponderous creak and she was surprised that it was Christopher, and not a manservant who opened them.

"Butler's day-off?" Marcie asked in jest, stepping inside.

"Hardly," Bleed sighed. "I don't even think he has staff. I only opened the doors so I could see outside. It was better than continually looking at those cheap souvenirs of his."

"I heard that, you vulgar vaudevillian," Vincent's voice called out from within the mansion. "Is that you, Marcie?"

"Yeah. I thought that we could put our heads together and figure this thing out," she said, finding a couch to sit on. "We're running out of time, and we haven't gotten any closer to cracking this case."

She gave a curious glance at the man's palatial home, looking around at the preserved posters that proclaimed Vincent's films and the displayed props and costumes of his work, the ostentatious pipe organ, and the huge oil painting of himself, suspended over the fireplace mantle.

All in all, it looked like a cross between a typical Gothic mansion's interior, albeit, well-lit and clean, and a small movie museum. It was eccentric, but impressive.

Marcie gave a casual nod of approval, then added, "Sorry I didn't come over sooner, but I had to stop by home and get some of my homework done. Dinkleys' orders."

Something struck Christopher as odd when he heard that. "You live with them? You were adopted, then?"

Marcie gave a chuckle and shook her head. "No, not adopted. They're just good friends who are helping me out of a jam."

"Forgive me, Miss Fleach," Bleed said, solemnly. "I did not mean to pry."

Marcie was about to wave it away, when Vincent interjected cattily. "He can't help himself. He's like an old, gossipy washerwoman."

"At least I have a better eye for home decor than you. I would never subject my home to this vulgarity," he said, casting another disdainful eye at the place. "This museum of the macabre is just a showcase for the only true thing on display, here. Your vanity."

"There's nothing wrong with showing the world your body of work," Vincent defended.

" _My_ work speaks for itself."

Marcie, who found herself, once again, in the center of one of their feuds, knew that nothing was going to get done as long as this was going on. Just as Darkfang wanted.

 _'Never do what the enemy expects,'_ she thought, switching tracks, for the moment, from being a detective, to being a mediator.

"Guys! Guys! It's all right. Look, if you want to know, I...had a little fight with my dad, and I ran away from home. I'm staying over at The Dinkleys for a while, that's all," she admitted, hoping that this would satisfy Christopher's curiosity, and make them both stop fighting, at least for ten minutes.

"It's no big deal," she added, lying to herself.

Bleed looked impossibly churlish at his behavior. He knew that her confession was more for his benefit, and calmed himself. "I'm sorry, Miss Fleach. I know that you only said all of that to stop our boorish bickering. I do not speak for Van Ghoul, but I shall focus on the matter at hand, from now on."

"Marcie," she said.

"I beg you pardon, Miss Fleach?" he asked.

"Call me Marcie," she told him, feeling like Angie, when she was addressed so formally. "We're all friends, here. Just Marcie."

Christopher nodded in understanding, but couldn't hide his discomfort for being so familiar, so soon. "Yes, of course. Marcie, it is."

She gave her hands a satisfied clap, signaling the end of the matter. "Okay, now that that's settled, how about the case?"

A sudden knock came from the stout oaken doors.

"I wasn't expecting anyone else today," Vincent wondered aloud, as he walked through the foyer to answer the knock. When he opened the doors, he sincerely wished that he didn't.

He jumped back into his house in alarm of seeing Doctor Darkfang darkening the threshold, leaving the doors open for him to saunter in.

"Good afternoon, lady and gentlemen," he announced. "I had hoped that my prescription would have cured you from staying on the case, but, alas, it seems that more radical treatment is in order."

With a loud whistle from Darkfang, a creature of legend was summoned to step into the home.

Marcie, Christopher, and Vincent were made fearful witness to a seven-foot tall, mad-eyed, slavering werewolf padding in, impossibly, from the light of day. It sniffed the air to acclimate itself to the occupants' scents, pointed ears swiveled to every sound heard.

"Uncle Wolfe," Bleed gasped to himself.

Marcie, overhearing him, asked, incredulously, "From _Barking 2_?"

"The very same."

Darkfang gave a gracious bow to the beast's prey. "My assistant will administer to you, now." He turned to the lycanthrope.

"Uncle Wolfe, I'll be waiting outside. I expect you to be completely professional and thorough with the patients. They proved to be quite non-compliant."

The werewolf focused his attention on the three, while Darkfang took his leave of them, an eager howl resounding through Van Ghoul Manor in his master's wake.

The lupine creature stalked into the foyer, sizing the three up by threat and ease of capture. Two old men and some slip of a girl wouldn't have made for a hearty meal, but, perhaps, after running them down, his appetite would grow less finicky.

Deciding to bring the girl down, first, he approached Marcie, bearing his snarling muzzle towards her panicked face.

In reaction, she picked up a candelabra from a nearby end table, and swatted it down against the beast's nose. With a surprised whine, the werewolf stopped, Marcie, suddenly, not knowing what to do next.

Only when the creature raised a mockery of a hand and slapped the candle holder from her shaking grip, did Marcie find the inspiration for her next course of action.

"Run!" she yelled, leaping away from the werewolf to get to some cover by the couch.

And thus, the chase began in earnest. A maelstrom of angry offensive and frantic defensive destruction was wrought around the foyer and living room. Objects were grabbed, and either brought up, or hurled, to fend off the monster, while the monster either smacked aside, or slashed apart those selfsame objects, when he wasn't rending other things apart, in an attempt to catch his quarry.

However, it wasn't long before the creature found himself slightly stymied, as it now had to split his attention between three moving targets, each one using the decor of the living room to their advantage.

When it approached one or two, the third would evade close enough to attract his notice, leaving the others free to escape, momentarily. It was the adage of the hound chasing after two rabbits, and losing them both, by a chaotic, monstrous degree.

Marcie found an opportunity to jump away from the beast when he focused on Bleed by the fireplace. They couldn't keep this evasion up for long, she knew. Offense was needed.

She hurriedly reached into her wool jacket for a Discourager, finding one. However, she hadn't paid attention to her surroundings, and one of her feet tripped against a raised fold of an antique rug that had been rumpled due to the hectic foot traffic.

She crashed onto the hardwood floor, just as the werewolf circled around behind her, seeing an opportunity to pounce.

The Discourager bounced from her hand and rolled up ahead, where it stopped against the shoe of a near-petrified Vincent Van Ghoul, who was standing nearby, desperate to help her, but at a loss as to what to do.

"Vincent!" Marcie called out. She knew that even if she had the time to get another capsule, she would be set upon by the time she turned over, aimed, and threw. "Get my capsule and throw it on the floor near me!"

"What?" Vincent gasped, not understanding why she would want that done to her, and not actually expecting to do any quick action, on his part, anyway.

"Just do it!"

Jumping, Van Ghoul plucked up the courage, and the Discourager, from the floor, then, raised his hand to throw, all the while, fearfully keeping his eyes on the creature slowly bearing down on him.

Giving a timid yell, he threw the capsule, awkwardly, in Marcie's general direction. It skipped off an end table that stood where she fell, bounced high, as its casing cracked, and arced, impossibly, into the monster's mouth, filling his maw with thick, acrid smoke.

The werewolf stopped in his tracks, eyes wide and watering, and he clutched at his throat with both clawed hands, trying to stem the caustic flow of miasma that was choking him, but still it came from his jaws, in clouds.

Finally, he could bear the discomfort no longer, clumsily backing away from the living room, and beating a choking, gasping retreat through the foyer and out of the open front double doors.

"Alright, Mr. Van Ghoul!" praised Marcie, as she got up from the floor." Nice throw!"

Vincent, only now realizing how his throw went, said, shakily, "I...I haven't made a pitch _that_ hard...since "The Mutant Bee." Is it...gone?"

"The beast ran outside," Bleed told him, sitting on the couch to catch his breath.

Marcie went over to the threshold and carefully peered out. A white van was seen racing from the neighborhood, trailing a heavy, chemical cloud.

She was about to return to the house, when she spotted something on the front lawn that wasn't there originally.

Walking over and reaching down, Marcie intercepted a crumpled piece of colored paper that was tumbling lightly in the breeze.

In spite of his feelings concerning the house, Christopher helped Vincent right pedestals and small furniture, gather disturbed maquettes and their acrylic display cases, and straighten off-kilter posters.

"My poor house," Vincent bemoaned. "I wouldn't have minded having a werewolf over for lunch, but this was stretching things."

"Not at all," Bleed said. "He simply wanted to...chew the fat with you."

Vincent favored Christopher a quizzical glance. "That creature must have frightened you more than I realized. You made a joke."

"Only to lighten the mood, and settle _your_ nerves," Bleed said, stiffly. "In any case, I do not frighten easily."

Before Vincent could remind him of his _own_ flight from the beast, Marcie returned, with something in her hand.

"Is he still out there?" Van Ghoul asked, fretfully.

"He's gone, along with Darkfang, in a white van, but he did leave something behind," she told him.

"What?"

She held up the now uncrumpled sheet for them to read. "This."

It was a flyer, announcing that a band called, Socially Defective, was performing that night at a rock club called Orck.

Christopher gave the paper a dubious look. "How is this important?"

"Aren't you wondering how Darkfang keeps finding us?" Marcie asked. "This might be a way to turn the tables on him. Remember what Mr. Schwartz said. If we can't find the director, then we find Darkfang, and get the truth from him."

"So, you think that he might be there?" asked Vincent.

"Possibly."

"Then you think that we can find him?" Vincent asked again.

"Hmm. Well, that all depends," Bleed said with a thoughtful slyness.

"On what?"

"On how well you can get a good make-up and costume person on short notice."

* * *

It was hard to tell who were music lovers, and who were just loitering drifters, outside of the rock club Orck, that early evening.

In dress and attitude, they were about equal, looking dangerously proud in their shabby, run-down, hand-me-down clothes. The perfect reflection of the venue, at least, on the outside.

A white VW convertible parked a few blocks from the place, the roof applied, and the windows, rolled up, understandably.

Three people, attempting to look like patrons of the art of punk rock, did there best to saunter towards the venue, with the bearing of those who didn't much care how the world viewed them.

Marcie swaggered a little too noticeably in her, according to Vincent's costumer, _nerd punk_ attire: low boots, torn fishnet thigh-highs, a skirt that was daringly short by two inches, a stained E=MC2 T-shirt, and a dingy army jacket. Her glasses remained to give her that nerd look, ironically.

Her two male companions sported scuffed boots, distressed jeans draped with thin chains, T-shirts, and leather jackets, with Vincent wearing typical sunglasses, and Christopher styling a pair of wrap-arounds with a visor slit to see out of.

Marcie wasn't feeling too at home in this particular neighborhood, as she glanced absently at the rugged looking store fronts and alleyways.

Looking ahead, she viewed the rock club's facade through the customers walking in. Then, she gave a look at the rest of the building, and suddenly felt a slight pang of recollection.

She stopped in her tracks and gave a wistful chuckle. "No way!" The disguised Vincent and Christopher halted, in turn.

"What's wrong?" Christopher asked.

"The club," Marcie said, smiling. "That used to be a dance club called Groovitations. It was the site of my first case."

"Really?"

"Yeah," she said. "I'll tell you guys about it, some time."

Marcie couldn't believe that it was mere months ago that she began this journey into becoming an amateur detective. It was just a mental exercise, at first, a way to keep her mind sharp and to avoid boredom.

Then, when it looked like she might not ever see Velma again, it became a way to try and keep the depression at bay. Now, after so many cases and misadventures, she knew that she was getting good at it, and now had her own war stories to proudly tell.

"Well, maybe you can tell me again why this ridiculous masquerade is even necessary?" Vincent groused, while nervously glancing at everyone he passed by.

"I know that you hate hearing this, but Mr. Bleed's got the right idea," Marcie told him. "If you two were seen without disguises, the crowd might freak out, our covers would be blown, and we might never be able to catch Darkfang."

"You see? This is why I refuse to follow Bleed's lead in our picture," Van Ghoul sighed. " It leads to this!"

Marcie ignored Vincent's complaints and focused on how she looked in her get-up. She had to smile. The clothes made her feel rebellious and different. "I don't know. It's kind of exciting walking around pretending to somebody you're not."

"Like Vincent pretending to be an actor," Bleed sniped, with a smirk. "It's the role he was born to play."

"Oh, stuff it!" Vincent shot back. "You know what I mean. There's work, and then, there's... _this_! This is humiliating."

"I just hope that it's convincing," Marcie said, as they reached the club's block.

"Assuming that he's even in there," Vincent said.

Marcie gave a worried frown. "I know what a long shot this is, but that flyer wasn't on your lawn when I came to your house, I only saw it after Darkfang and Fido left."

"He might've left that clue behind for you to find it," Vincent continued. "As bait."

The girl shrugged. Van Ghoul did have a point. "Yeah," she admitted. "He does seem slick enough to try something like that. But if that is the case, then I'm kind of hoping that he _does_ try it."

"What ever for?"

"If I can serve _myself_ up as bait, then maybe I can lure Darkfang out, and we can get him," Marcie explained, as they closed in on the front doors of the club.

Christopher considered the girl's plan, gave a dubious grunt, and said his peace. "A dangerous game."

Marcie shrugged. "True, but look at the way we're dressed. It wouldn't be fun unless it was dangerous," Marcie cajoled, grabbing hold of one of the door handles. "Now, c'mon, you bunch of ne'er-do-wells! Let's show those poseurs in there that you're never too old to rock-n-roll."

She opened the door, and was immediately dumbfounded.

Marcie had never been to a concert or show outside of any event being held as a school function, so she was ill-prepared for the sensory assault that existed beyond the front doors.

The doors and, indeed, the facade of the building must have been soundproofed, because the moment she entered, she was staggered back a step or two from the relentless cacophony.

Her ears began to ring under the raucous cheers and whistles of the approving mass of head-bangers, and, thanks to Orck's sound system, the low-frequency attack of the band's bass guitar, slammed into her like a wave of physical blows.

Although it was incredibly hard to concentrate, Marcie took a moment to look around to satisfy her curiosity concerning how the former Groovitations, where the villain, Ringleader, held court, became the new Orck.

Architecturally, the place hadn't changed. The dark, high balcony still overlooked the festivities, the bar still stood to serve the thirsty, the secluded lounge still remained off from the dance area, now, a possible indoor moshpit, if the patrons had anything to say about it.

In fact, other than the sound system, and its conspicuously huge speakers towering in ever corner of the interior, the poster- and flyer-plastered walls, and the stage, with its electrical hook-ups, it was Groovitations in a new light, but still doing what always did, entertain the masses.

With her trip through Memory Lane over, she gathered the actors to her side, and had to yell to be heard.

"Man, this place is...loud!" she tried to shout over the drummer's semi-primitive rhythms. "Listen, we're going to have to ask around, and keep our eyes open for Darkfang. We ran into him, already, so we know what he looks like."

"Then we should split up," yelled Vincent.

"My thoughts, exactly," Marcie agreed. "We'll meet back here at the front entrance in fifteen minutes."

"Very well," Bleed called out, looking at the area closest to the band. "I'll go near the stage."

Recalling the place's layout from her time as a slave of Ringleader, Marcie glanced towards the dark rear of the chamber. "I'll head over to the balcony and the back."

Vincent, unsure of these rough surroundings, and therefore, uneasy, listened to his instincts and erred on the side of caution, saying, "And I'll ask around by the entrance, so you two will know where I am, when we rendezvous."

Christopher and Marcie gave a dubious glance at Vincent. It sounded prudent, but there was also the slightest whiff of self-serving timidity from that course of action.

Marcie turned towards her hunting spot and began to leave, telling the two, "Okay, gang, let's split up!"

"Why did that feel so right to say?" she wondered aloud, then, she departed.

* * *

It didn't take long for the hunt to sour, as far as Christopher was concerned. Being so close to the stage, he could have sworn that he was having a headache, if he could feel it over the pounding din of this so-called music.

Young people ignored him when he asked if anyone fitted Darkfang's description. Those that angrily broke their connection with the band to acknowledge him, were quick to tell him, in the most colorful of phrases they knew, what they thought of anybody who dared interrupted their listening pleasure.

And that was when he wasn't jostled with an elbow in the ribs or arm, or his toes stepped on. All accidental, of course, or by design, considering the way they danced.

Vincent, trying to squeeze past oblivious revelers, fared no better, on his way to reaching Bleed.

Arriving, he found the man convalescing against the foot of the stage, looking like an old warrior making his last stand, facing down a horde of loud, young barbarians.

"Bleed!" Vincent called out. "How much longer do we have to stay here? These people are pushy, and rude, and said very mean things to me. Let's find Marcie and get out of here."

Christopher gave a pained look up at the stage, and yelled back, "It's just as well. No one here is helpful, especially this poor excuse of a band."

Unfortunately, timing was not on Christopher's side, because the band ended their number, just when he made his comment, which was picked up by the lead singer's microphone, and relayed for all the audience to hear.

A shocked hush fell in the room, followed by the growls of everyone immediately around Van Ghoul and Bleed.

* * *

Marcie was kicking herself. This was a daft plan from the start, she finally admitted, after her tenth go-around of no leads from the patrons.

She was sure that the flyer wasn't there when she arrived at Van Ghoul's place, therefore, the paper's appearance was either planted there, or actually dropped by the werewolf, somehow, considering the fact that the beast had no pockets, or it was just one heck of a coincidence that it blew in from somewhere else.

Marcie shook her head at that. Coincidences were something she had trained her mind not to accept, at an early age.

"This getting us nowhere," she groaned in the dimness of the passageway leading towards the restrooms and the emergency exit. "I was just being desperate. So, here I am, trying to make my frustration fit the facts. Smooth move, Marcie."

She pivoted to leave the area and slalom around the crowds to reach the entrance, her mind running things to say that would _not_ have her companions think that she was wasting their precious time.

A clawed hand suddenly gripped her mouth, a muscled arm wrapped around her struggling waist, and she was swiftly dragged deeper into the darkness.

* * *

"Bleed," Vincent muttered, fearfully. "I've been on Broadway, and I know a bad crowd when I see one. This is definitely a bad crowd. What do we do, now?"

A voice rang out from the club's speakers, the front man's, as he took umbrage upon the two hapless actors, and looked down at them from the stage.

"Hey, man!" he barked. "What are you? Some kinda music critic? You've gotta lotta brass coming up here and trashing our music, man."

Christopher, refusing to let some riffing riff-raff rattle him, calmly stepped away from the foot of the stage, so that he could look the youth dead in his eyes.

"Yeah! I'm talking to you, _old man_!" the singer said, putting emphasis on the "old man" part. "You're lucky that I don't punch out old geezers. I'm tryin' to quit. But nobody never said that I can't embarrass the heck out of 'em. So here's the deal. If you think you rock harder than me, c'mon up."

Hearing the challenge being laid before Bleed, the audience both cheered their generational champion, and jeered Christopher. But then, to everyone's and Vincent's surprise, the actor imperiously walked up to the stage.

Some of the crowd laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of it, others scoffed, but the majority decided to cheer for this underdog. Everyone agreed, collectively, however, that this was going to be a hell of a break before the concert picked up again.

"Bleed, what are you doing?" Van Ghoul asked, knowing, for sure, that this was one stage where the great Christopher Bleed would fall from.

"I am an actor!" Bleed confidently intoned. "I shall never turn my back on the stage! Besides, as Marcie said, we must show these whelps how we rock."

Finding a dark, old, folded cloth that some stage hand had left in a far corner of the stage, Bleed unfurled it, and tied it to his throat, as a cape. Whereupon, he turned up the collar of his black jacket to complete the sinister look.

Turning to the waiting band, while the lead singer graciously yielded his microphone and the floor to him, he asked, "Do any of you know "Metallic Taste?""

When the band nodded, impressed that he would even know that song, Christopher walked to the edge of the stage, and gazed out at the audience, as if he were an emperor looking over his subjects.

He leaned forward a little, in preparation of the power he would show the audience, gripping the microphone in one hand, and raising the other, as a signal.

When that hand dropped, the metal began.

Verse:

 _I have to warn you, my filmography,_

 _Will have you squeamish of biology,_

 _My terror crushes your psychology,_

 _Mention my name when you're in therapy..._

 _Your spirit sinks, as the full moon rises,_

 _No Trick-or-Treat, but the has night has surprises for you,_

 _The dark shadows of creatures appear,_

 _Only herald the time of their feeding is near,_

Chorus:

 _That metallic taste in your mouth,_

 _Is your only warning your life has gone south,_

 _Thought if you were smart and brave, you'd remain,_

 _But instead, you ran, like blood down a drain,_

Verse:

 _Your two conditions, come morning and dusk,_

 _Is whether you're still alive, or you died as a husk,_

 _Sanctuary, or claws at your back,_

 _Providence, or just more food for the pack,_

 _Thought those Hollywood movies could keep you alive,_

 _Couldn't outrun the beast, it was all just a lie,_

 _Only in your demise, will the truth be awoken,_

 _When your heart, your will, and your bones have been broken,_

Chorus:

 _That metallic taste in your mouth,_

 _Is the end result of your panic and doubt,_

 _Over your shoulder, you witness your bane_

 _Feel the teeth at your throat, and your energy drain,_

(Bridge)

 _You'll find no solutions, when I put you in sutures,_

 _Grave robbers and looters, won't even salute ya,_

 _You're not well-suited, and I won't delude ya,_

 _A milk carton's in your immediate future,_

Verse:

 _Fear has taken, yet, another soul,_

 _One more customer Charon will ask for the toll,_

 _The next time you're lying alone,_

 _Your headboard'll be your tombstone,_

Chorus:

 _That metallic taste in your mouth,_

 _Is your only warning your life has gone south,_

 _Thought if you were smart and brave, you'd remain,_

 _But instead, you ran like, blood down the drain,_

 _That metallic taste in your mouth,_

 _The end result of your panic and doubt,_

 _Over your shoulder, you witness your bane_

 _Feel the teeth at your throat, and your energy drain,_

 _That metallic taste in your mouth,_

 _Like the first time you were locked out of your house,_

 _And the scent of your fear is especially rank,_

 _When your cowardice surges, and your bravery tanks,_

 _That metallic taste in your mouth,_

 _Is the very last thing you'll be thinking about,_

 _Last breath, last hope, last hour,_

 _Only darkness, as you are quickly devoured!_

The song ended with an echoing of the word, "devoured." Everyone was silent, still, digesting every word, nuance, and power of Christopher's singing.

Club Orkc exploded in the sudden cheers, adulation, and respect of the people who had the opportunity to witness such a performance.

The lead singer of Socially Defective, approached Christopher with a more humbler posture, accepting the mic back, and saying to him, "Man, that crushes! I didn't think you had it in you."

"Indeed," the actor said, then, he decided to be more magnamous to the young man. "However, if you continue to practice your craft, then, someday, you will be able to rock as hard as _I_ do."

"Hey, thanks, man," the front man said, taking his wisdom to heart.

Christopher stepped off the stage and was prepared to head deeper into the club to find Marcie, when the youth asked one more thing of him.

"Hey, man. What's you name?"

The actor, seizing a moment for drama, gave him a mysterious look and deeply uttered one word.

" _Bleed_."

With that, he and Vincent departed, leaving the singer standing on the stage, with flabbergasted "Whoa..." on his lips.

With the crowd thoroughly on their side, it was easier for Vincent and Christopher to move through the crowd to look for Marcie. They shouted her name, when they reached the entrance, but her voice wasn't heard.

"Maybe she's still looking," Vincent suggested, although the worry that something might have happened to her haunted both men.

"Let's keep looking for _her_ ," Bleed said, but before they could set out to go further into the place, a punk girl walked over to them, vapidly chewing on gum. Vincent was the first to respond.

"I'm sorry, miss, but my friend and I can't give your our autographs, right now. We have to find somebody."

"That girl with glasses you guys came in with?"

Both men perked up. "Yes!" said Van Ghoul. "Have you seen her?"

The girl shook her head as vapidly as she chewed gum. "Well, she's not here, dude. She left with somebody's dog, man. It was a big sucker, too."

"A...dog?" Vincent pondered, but then, both men came to the same conclusion.

"Uncle Wolfe!" they answered in fretful unison.

Marcie's plan had backfired, and somewhere in the dark corners of the club, the huntress had, all along, been the hunted.


	4. 4

_4~_

The darkness stayed with her.

Blindfolded, she only knew that she was seated on a chair, and that the new place carried on the night air the scent of old materials, encroaching vegetation, corrosion, and disuse.

It was just another thing that reminded her of Groovitations in Ringleader's time. With her vision gone, the smells of rot and rust strongly brought her back to those heady days as well as any Hour Tower.

Before all of that, she was abducted by a lycanthrope who, apparently, frequented rock clubs. Was, then, restrained, gagged, blindfolded and tossed her into a large vehicle, no doubt, the white van from earlier.

She was still restrained, however, and jumped in her seat, if not, out of her skin, when she felt the knot that secured the cloth over her eyes, get tugged, and the cloth fall away.

Marcie craned her neck around to see who was with her. Everything was a blur. Then, she glumly realized that she was without her glasses.

The gag was the next thing to go, allowing Marcie to ask, "Would you mind giving me back my glasses, Darkfang? I like to see the deathtrap that I'm going to escape from."

Behind her, the unseen guest slipped her spectacles back on her face.

"Thanks," she said, before a clawed hand rested hard on her shoulder, making her jump, once again.

Seeing that she understood that she wasn't out of the woods, Uncle Wolfe gave a growl of a laugh, lifted his hand off of Marcie, and padded away.

"I hope you get heartworms!" she yelled out.

From somewhere Marcie could detect was below her, Darkfang's voice echoed mockingly. "That wasn't very nice to say to him."

"I was talking to you."

"You know, I could have him bite you," he chuckled. "Just to see what would happen. Scientific curiosity, and all that."

"According to you, I'd become a werewolf, reluctantly," said Marcie, trying to squeeze and slip out of the clothesline rope bonds, but, to no avail.

"True, but I don't have time to perform such radical gene therapy on you, right now," Darkfang commented. "By the way, do you know where you are?"

Marcie looked around. Her chair rested on what looked like a catwalk, giving her commanding view of her surroundings, a large building, run-down and forgotten, an abandoned factory of some kind.

Off to the side, amid the broken windows, dusty, littered floors, and ancient, defunct machinery, Marcie could see a rusted plaque on a wall, but had trouble reading the building's name and address, due to distance and its badly weathered condition.

"A...candle factory?"

"Ah, yes! Candles," Darkfang pontificated. "Who even uses them anymore? Maybe your friend, Vincent Van Goof, in that mansion of his. Probably more for atmosphere, than emergencies."

"You know, I could make the comment on how technology and globalization has turned some of our factories into this, but I'll just ask why I'm here," she replied, dryly.

"Oh, I can answer that one for you. Obsolescence. Being behind the times. That's why this place looks like this. But there's still hope. Maybe somebody will buy this place and renovate it, just like they did with your old stomping grounds, Groovitations. Who knows? They might even call it _Marcie's_ , after they know what happens here."

Some of what he said struck Marcie as odd, but the last bit made her worrisome. "What _does_ happen here?"

The sound of footsteps receding from her told her that her guest was about to leave her with her answer.

"Well, I won't spoil the surprise for you," Darkfang said, jauntily. "However, I will leave you with a riddle. What will you and the human ear have in common, come morning?"

The sound of a heavy door scrapping against the floor signaled his departure.

"Good evening to you," he bade, and then, he and the werewolf were gone.

Marcie scrunched her up-turned nose, quizzically, as she pondered the riddle. "Me and the human ear? What's he talking about?"

Her mind switched tracks when the catwalk suddenly jerked forward, and she feared that the elderly building was finally falling apart. But, for all of its decrepitude, the factory not only still stood, but revealed that it still had some life left in it, as evident in the platform now moving.

"Yikes!" Marcie realized to herself. "This isn't a catwalk. It's a conveyor belt!" She squirmed harder against the ropes, but couldn't get the needed leverage.

Up ahead, the girl could see a disquieting glow at the end of the belt's path, and as the belt trundled her along, she could also hear something, not heard since the factory's heyday, in the chamber. That, of bubbling paraffin.

"Oh, I get it," Marcie said, morosely. "What will the human ear and I have in common? We'll both suffer from waxy build-up. Great. Well, he didn't _wax_ poetic over that one."

The old factory set out to prove that it still had one more candle left in it, and by the end of the night, it would be her.

It was only when Marcie gave a quick reckoning to the distance she had slowly, yet steadily, traveled, thus far, almost towards the halfway point of the belt's length, that she began to take her situation a bit more seriously.

Once more, she pulled against her bonds, but still they didn't slacken, her arms remained pinned to her sides. As a budding scientist, Marcie more than appreciated the fact that time and space, in this case, distance, were running out, and in her despair, she flailed her forearms and growled to the rotted ceiling in frustration.

Then, another thought came to Marcie, one frightening her most of all, that she would die without seeing her mother, young, or, at her proper age, again. The same grim thought haunted her with the consideration that she would never have the chance to see Velma, as well.

And then, there was a final, more immediate regret. That she wouldn't live long enough to make peace with her father, not caring, at the moment, who was to blame.

It wasn't until she barely heard within her, the first friend she ever had, the small voice of The Performer, the competitor, the future winner of science fairs and Olympiads, the conqueror of chemical formulae, the fabricator and programmer that mentally gave her a cold, hard slap of realization.

 _You don't quit. Ever..._

It took a few moments to quiet her mind and evaporate the fog of despair that settled on it. She had to focus on her options, no matter how few they seemed.

"Okay, Marcie," she sighed. "You need options. You can't get out of these stupid ropes in time to escape being turned into a wax statue. Wax statute...hmm. Better table that for later. Right now, I need help."

Then a thought, an option, struck her.

"Help! That's it! Vincent and Christopher! Thank goodness I made sure to get their numbers, so they'd be close by. Now, all I need to do is call...them."

Marcie's hopes and heart sank like a torpedoed ship, when she reflexively looked at the breast pocket of her baggy army jacket. "Rats, my cell phone's in the pocket! Now, how am I going to get it?"

She balled her hands into angry fists, as despair began to close in around her, once more. Then, she gradually noticed something, when she continued to look down.

"That's it!"

Her forearms and hands weren't tied down. She didn't have enough leverage to free herself, but she did have enough partial freedom of movement to reach her pocket, if she was careful.

Flexing the arm opposite the side where the target pocket was, the hand, at the wrist, and then, stretching her fingers to reach the bottom of the pocket, she felt the phone against her fingertips, as she carefully began to press against it, pushing it up, by slow inches.

When Marcie could see the top of the device peeking out of the pocket's opening, she mentally prepared herself by saying, "Okay. This'll be easy. Just like bobbing for apples."

She painfully lowered her head over the pocket, the muscles and bones in her neck, straining, closed her mouth around the top of the cell phone, and carefully pulled it out by her teeth.

Keeping her knees tight, she let the phone drop into her lap, where her hands could comfortably reach.

"Easy," she sighed, as she dialed.

* * *

"We've got to call the police!" Bleed said, decisively, outside of Orkc's.

"We can't, Christopher!" Vincent countered, frantically. "You know what the letter said."

"First, this criminal kidnaps our director, and now, he steals away Miss Fleach, as well? This is inexcusable," Bleed fumed. "The police must be told."

"What about Angie?" Van Ghoul implored. "Have you thought about what's going to happen when she finds out that we lost her? She knows... _strange things_. She could _do_... _strange things_ …to _us_!"

Christopher eased his concern to consider that possibility. "Perhaps, but we can't be compliant, now. This Darkfang forced our hand with this. We must call the police. It's the responsible thing to do."

Vincent struggled, but decided not to let his innate cowardice guide his actions, and looked at it Bleed's way. And Christopher was right. By kidnapping Marcie, he effectively took the key player away from the very game he wanted to her play, making it null and void.

This game was never any fun, on their side of things, but now, to keep playing by Darkfang's rules only put Marcie in a worse situation than she was, right now.

Vincent hung his head in acquiescence, and said, " All right."

Just then, his cell phone ringtone sang in his jacket pocket. As soon as he heard Marcie's nervous voice on the other end, his heart soon followed.

"Bleed, it's Marcie!" he happily yelled to him, then, he turned his attention back to the phone. "Where are you? Oh, you don't know relieved we are to hear your voice! We were just debating on whether to call the police to look for you, but-"

"Vincent!" Marcie yelled over her lap into her phone's tiny receiver.

"Oh, sorry," Vincent said, berating himself on his emotional state. "Please, go on."

"It's kind of noisy, here, but listen!" she yelled. "I'm in some run-down candle factory. Probably somewhere in the industrial side of town."

"What's the address?"

"I don't know. I could only read part of the address. It looked like 5 or 6...Progress Road, I think. Just ask somebody to bring you here to the neighborhood. You might be able to find me. Hurry, guys! I'm in real trouble!"

"All right!" Vincent said. "We'll be there! Hang on!"

"What did she say?" Bleed asked, while Vincent slid the phone back into his pocket, forgetting, in his excitement, to turn it off.

"She's in an old factory in the industrial part of town," Vincent related. "We have to get there, fast!"

"Very well! Where is it?"

Vincent gave a sheepish pause, and then confessed, "Uh, well...I…don't exactly know how to get there."

Christopher's face fell, and its lines became more pronounced. "What?"

"I don't know how to get to that part of town."

"I heard you say that we'll be there," Bleed growled. "Why didn't you tell her that you didn't know how to get to her?"

His head hung low. "She sounded so desperate. I didn't want to dash her hopes."

"But, you live here!" Bleed argued.

"That doesn't mean I know every inch of this place," Van Ghoul countered. "What do you think I am? A cab driver?"

Christopher threw up his hands in frustrated disgust and worry. "Bah! This is hopeless, and you are less than useless!"

That stung Van Ghoul, so, he shot back, forgetting Marcie's quagmire, in the heat of the moment. "You take that back, you scene stealing...hack-of-all-trades!"

Bleed puffed up, and said, defensively, "I will not, you pretentious amateur!"

"Tongue-tied thespian!"

"Over-the-hill wannabe!"

"I have been an actor longer than you have," Bleed said. "Respect your far more experienced elders. I can, at least, remember my lines!

"Can you even _read_ your lines, you dusty, old has-been!" Vincent shot back.

Christopher's eyes widened from wounded pride. "Has-been? You should see what I have done with The Dark Count. I've long done great justice to Stoker's work!"

"You should have!" Van Ghoul replied. "You were probably there when he wrote it!"

However, before things had gotten more heated, the shouting attracted the attention of the punk-rock girl they had met earlier. She sauntered over to Christopher.

"Hey, Bleed. Great number, by the way," she complimented him, and then asked, "Did you guys ever find that girl, yet?"

"Yes, and no," Bleed admitted.

"We, kind of, know where she is," Vincent explained. "A factory on Progress Road, I think, but we don't know how to get there."

Both men were sadly expecting the girl to shrug, say that she didn't know, either, and wish them luck, or tell them to call the police.

What they didn't expect was for her to say, "Oh, I know that part of town, dudes. Do you want me to take you?"

* * *

With a quiet sense of dread, Marcie had heard the entire exchange between Christopher and Vincent, and knew that she had effectively put her life in the hands of two divas.

Becoming profoundly more morose, she sat, thinking, as the belt continued to carry her towards a most novel doom.

Looking for more options, Marcie paid more attention to how she was restrained, starting with her legs and feet. Although her legs could flex and open, her ankles were bound, not to the front legs of the chair, but to each other.

She knew that she couldn't just simply sit tight until help arrived. There was no guarantee that the actors would show up in time. She had to do something.

While Marcie wished that she could run from this predicament, an idea popped into her head.

Taking a deep breath and summoning all of her lower body strength, Marcie leaned forward, tucking her feet under the chair for precious leverage and balance, and stood up, with a grunt.

Because of the chair, her posture bent forward to an uncomfortable degree, but mobility was, at last, hers.

With awkward hops, she rotated from the direction of the belt's edge, up ahead, and then, continued to hop away from it against the slow, relentless speed of the belt.

It felt like trying to hop up a downward escalator. For every foot that she gained, she was lost two. And, due to her stooped position, she was already beginning to tire.

With her torso compressed forward, her ribcage and diaphragm couldn't expand enough to get more air into her, despite her adrenaline providing more oxygen to her blood.

Marcie knew that she couldn't keep this up for long, that eventually she would tire completely, and resign herself to her fate. But, for now, sheer willpower and focus would have to do to forestall that eventuality.

A few minutes passed, and her legs began to wobble, her breathing, more labored. Every hop was slower, and more tortured, than the last. The belt, inexorably, was winning.

"C-Come...on...guys," Marcie puffed, her heart banging, like a caged animal wanting release. "Ah!"

At last, her aching legs gave out, and she felt the awkward weight of the chair pinning her down, as she collapsed, breathlessly, onto the belt. She managed to prolong the deathtrap for as long as she could, but, in the end, she couldn't outsmart simple, mindless machinery.

Marcie fought to catch her breath under the chair, but she was too tired to panic, when the belt carried her past the halfway point, and she could actually hear the sound of thick, bubbling wax simmering from some surviving, industrial vat, far below.

She was even too tired to respond to what she thought was the sudden, last-minute calling of her name by Vincent and Christopher, echoing from somewhere below.

She just, restfully, closed her eyes, and hoped that the end would be as relatively painless as she tried to convince herself, as the belt conveyed her to the edge and she, finally, tumbled off.

Marcie felt weightless in the fall, while she consciously waited for the hellishly hot suffocation of the wax.

Then, it came. She hit the surface...and sank.

Seconds later, Marcie noticed, when she opened her eyes, that her skin wasn't scalded from her flesh. In fact, it felt very much like a bed. A considerably large one.

Awkwardly lying on one side, and from the corner of her eye, she could see Bleed, Van Ghoul, and an unfamiliar girl hurriedly approach whatever it was she had landed on.

"Marcie, are you all right?" Vincent asked, thankful that she cheated death, yet again, or, at least, appeared to.

"Yeah," Marcie said, her voice muffled under what felt like strong cloth. "What did I fall into?"

"One of those giant airbags those stuntmen always jump into," explained Van Ghoul.

The punk rock girl looked up at where Marcie fell, and smiled vacantly. "Man, you old guys know how to party," she marveled.

The cushion sagged and deflated from the controlled release of air, following Marcie's hard landing, until it was low enough for Bleed to wade upon it, and work on her bonds.

"You knew how to get up here?" she asked him. "I didn't think I could read enough of the address to help."

"We had help in the form of that considerate young woman over there," he explained, nodding to the girl, who seemed fascinated by the space and possible danger of the building. "There you are."

Christopher undid the last of the ropes, and Marcie, relieved, followed him off the cushion, on weary, ungainly legs.

She, then, turned back to face it, wondering aloud, "Why would he put me through all of that?"

"It's obvious that he means to scare us away," said Vincent.

Marcie stopped to consider that. "That's true. But, if wanted to finish us off, he could've. What's his game?"

Vincent glanced behind himself to find a place to rest, and, upon finding what looked to be a comfortable, tarp-covered pile, sat down. Then, he jumped back up.

"Yeouch! What's under this thing?" he asked, pulling the tarp away to find a haphazard pile of crates filled with out-dated spare parts, and one running camcorder, pointed at the airbag.

"A camera? But how could see anything under here?" Vincent wondered, so, he lifted and widened the tarp, revealing a hole roughly the size of the camera's lens.

"That would explain it," he nodded.

"I think it's starting to explain a lot of things," Marcie said, pointing up underneath the where the belt looped away to drop blocks of wax into a vat that wasn't there, anymore. "Look."

All did look to see a brace of flickering orange and red lights surrounding a still-puffing smokepot that was set up between two speakers, whose cords ran down the conveyor belt's support beams to a tape recorder.

She walked over to the machine, opened the tape deck, removed the cassette, and read its label. Bubbling Sound FX.

Wearily, Marcie turned back to the group, and announced, "It's getting late, guys. Darkfang won this round. Let's call it a night, and try again, tomorrow."

"Good idea," Vincent agreed. "I don't want to say that I'm too old for all of this...but I'm too old for all of this."

Outside the weed-choked exterior of the factory, the group walked over to the punk-rock girl's black, non-descript car. Marcie regarded her, for a moment.

"I forgot to thank you for helping me," she said to her. "How did you know where this place was?"

The girl chewed her gum and shrugged. "My old man works for Steelco. They've got a plant not far from here."

Soon, everyone piled into the car, but before she started it up, the girl leaned back and asked Bleed, who was in the backseat with Vincent, "Hey, you don't mind coming back to Orkc's and doing another song for us, do ya?"

Bleed gave a pleased, almost smug, smile to Van Ghoul, and said to her, "Of course, my child. How could I refuse a request from a dear fan?"

A look of confusion crossed the girl's eyes.

"Oh, there's no deer in Orkc's, dude," she explained. "But, I did see a raccoon in the restroom, once."

"Indeed," Christopher deadpanned, while Vincent and Marcie chuckled. For a moment, he began to fear for the youth of America, as the car pulled away into the night.


	5. 5

_5~_

The corridors of Crystal Cove High were crammed with its student body, freed from the scholastic concerns of the day.

GoreGuru86 stood out from the crowds outside his homeroom, in that, he spotted Marcie ahead of the human swell, and called out to her.

She didn't turn to the sound. That was understandable to him, considering the din the other students were making. So, he locked-on to the head of brown, unkempt hair, and did his best to navigate through the noisy mob, hoping to close in on Marcie, who looked like she was heading out with everyone else.

Outside in the school parking lot, GoreGuru tracked her to her VW, but didn't approach directly.

She stood by her car, talking into her cell phone, so, decorum made him keep a discrete distance, and wait by a neighboring car.

However, her voice was noticeably raised, so, he couldn't help hearing the following...

"You don't have to remind me of how Darkfang caught me, Mr. Van Ghoul. Believe it, or not, I was there," she said, testily. "I'm not being surly, sir. I'm just saying that-Yes, I know they exist, and I have an idea on where they are, and how to deal with them, but you and Mr. Bleed have to stay with me and help me out."

GoreGuru was about to stop eavesdropping, and wait somewhere else, until she finished her lively conversation, when she unexpectedly said something that changed the level of the concern he wanted to address her with.

"Yes, I know he's a vampire," Marcie said, as a matter-of-factly as saying that the sky was blue. "Isn't it obvious? Yes. I'll go and pick it up, and then, you and Mr. Bleed will meet me...at the old house. Bye."

Marcie tucked the phone away, pulled out her keys, and stepped into her car, just in time to see GoreGuru walk over to her.

"Hey, GoreGuru. What's up?" she asked.

Leaning casually against the car door, he said, "Nothing much. I just wanted to know how you were coming along with the mystery. Have you found my dad, yet?"

Behind her glasses, Marcie's face fell. She didn't need to tell him about her and the actors' specific failures, but, on the same token, she couldn't keep the truth from him, either.

"I...We've had some problems trying to find him," she sighed. "Not for lack of trying, but that Darkfang keeps attacking and throwing monsters at us, stopping us from looking for clues."

GoreGuru's face twisted into one of confusion over monsters, and frustration over his missing loved one. "Monsters? Really? I heard you on the phone, just now. C'mon, Marcie. This is my dad I'm talking about! Why can't you just try harder?"

The Performer in Marcie took immediate umbrage at the question, causing her to snap at him without thinking. "Who says I'm not?"

She realized, just then, what a petty deflection that was. It was all about _his_ feelings, and not hers. His worries were legitimate, and hers, shallow. She put The Performer in a mental choke-chain, and took a breath.

"I'm sorry, GG," Marcie said to him. "Listen, we're doing our level best to figure out where your father was taken, but these things take time."

It sounded better in her head, she thought, but coming out, the words sounded like an excuse if ever she heard one. And, he responded as such.

"He doesn't have any time!" he said, loudly. "You don't know what you're doing, do you?"

"The week's not over, yet, GoreGuru. We can still find him."

GoreGuru stood up from the door, preparing to leave, but not without leaving a parting word to Marcie.

"Y'know, I thought you were the best," he snarled. "But the only thing you're the best at is making excuses."

"That's no fair!"

"Well, guess what? Life's not fair. What happened to my dad's not fair. I'm not going to see him again, and you know what? It's all your fault!"

Marcie's mind was blank and shaken from the exchange. She just slumped into the driver's seat, and watched a distraught GoreGuru make an angry beeline out of the parking lot.

* * *

The sun was sliding into the horizon, later that day, as Darkfang played in the shadows of the alleyways and under awnings, keeping out of sight, but keeping his sight fixed on the furniture store across the street from him.

The occasional pedestrian would happen to walk by him, give him a worried or quizzical glance, and then continue on his or her way, which suited him fine. No one would dare give him reason to pause in his affairs, without suffering his reprisal.

A little bell sounded from the threshold of the furniture store, drawing all of his attention that way. Coming out of the shop, was his quarry, at last.

Marcie exited the store holding something odd in her hand. It was a wooden table leg. At least, the part that connected it to the rest of the table was that. Where the leg would taper to become the narrow "foot" that would rest on the floor, was now filed and sharpened to an ominous point.

Darkfang straightened in remembrance. He had seen enough in his day to know what that looked like. A stake, and with the ornamental details still carved into the leg's "thigh", it had become a rather ornate one.

Marcie gave a cautious glance up and down the street, and thought that she saw something suspicious across from her, but Darkfang had moved into the deeper shadows of an alley, just in time.

Feeling relatively safer, she walked over to the Clue Cruiser, and soon drove away.

A white van had entered traffic soon after, to stalk her, carefully, in the sunset of the day.

* * *

Standing among Crystal Cove's sound stages and lots, rose a hill on the property, as ancient, as it was foreboding. What made it so was the building that sat upon its summit, like a dark, towering, Gothic crown. Old Witchcock Manor.

Built in the late 40's to be used as a set for horror pictures, by then, famed English horror director Alistair Witchcock, the mansion was fully constructed to be sturdy enough to be used over and over again, as well as be tough enough to stand up to the elements over the years, which, favorably, gave it a more and more weathered and authentic look, both inside and out.

Studio workers and tourists who gazed up at the hill, at the right moment when the sun went down, would see the grand mansion in its finest light, as the last rays of orange and crimson would play along the half-rotted wooden panels of the exterior, glint with an almost sad beauty off of the darkened windows and surviving wrought-iron decorations, and stretch the shadow of the already towering edifice, down the hill, like a voiceless harbinger for the tales of woe to come.

Darkfang had already seen Marcie ascend the hill under the fading daylight, reach the shadowed porch of the house, and watched her enter, as if the house had a maw that had swallowed her into its darkness.

He followed, and by then, the sun's light had, finally, died for the day, leaving the mansion looking like a tall, sepulchral monument under the spreading, young night sky.

Darkfang approached the doors and gave the knobs a twist. They opened easily, and he could smell the years of must and rot that was the very breath of the mansion, come upon him, as he stepped through.

The ambient light of the outdoors gave him some illumination, as he entered the foyer, but, suddenly, the doors swung back closed with a boom that echoed through the mansion's lower level, driving the interior into a deeper darkness.

Darkfang, cautiously, stood where he was. He was unfamiliar with the place, and, in the distance, he could make out the sound of walking, of slow, heavy and confidant steps, but saw no one.

Eventually, his eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom, and just then, he could see Marcie, standing by the cobwebbed post of the staircase banister, holding the stake in one hand, and a penlight to glow the space between them, in the other. He could see no one else.

Darkfang nodded to the weapon. "Is that for me?"

"Only if communications breakdown," said Marcie, evenly.

"Where are Bleed and Van Ghoul?" he asked.

"They ran off. They were too scared," she said. "But then, you would know all about that, wouldn't you?"

"Guilty," he confessed, mockingly. "But I told you in my letter that they had to be with you, or else, you'd never see the director again. Obviously, you didn't take me seriously."

"I kept them with me for as long as I could, Darkfang," Marcie defended. "But since you're here, I can tell you that you fell into _my_ trap. I _do_ know who you are, and I _will_ get you to tell me where you've hidden the director."

Darkfang gave a leisurely smile, yet, kept his eyes on the stake. "Unlikely, but proceed."

"You're really-" Marcie stopped mid-revelation, twisting her head around in response to something heard. "What was that? Someone's in here with us. You brought that stupid werewolf along, didn't you?"

"I brought no one." Darkfang said, with a frown.

It was there, again. A sound of footfalls, so persistent, as to be close to vexation, faintly echoing and played along the far, dark corners of where the living room was. The creaking of floorboards yielding to a weighty step. Something, or someone, was here with them.

His senses become almost as acute as his fear, when he saw a silent figure, like an alien shadow, rise to its full height behind an oblivious Marcie.

Its featureless appearance was so shocking by its sheer presence, Darkfang could only think of warning her by pointing a trembling finger at the specter, his voice, already failing him. But his considerably good deed was too little, and far too late.

The shadow leaned over Marcie just enough to have its face caught by the small amount of light in the room, revealing, to Darkfang's now reeling sense of reality, to be The Dark Count, in the horrid, evil, and hungry flesh.

Before Darkfang could force his throat to squeak out an alarm, the Count spared him a single dismissive sneer, and then, snatched Marcie aloft in a restraining, one-armed hug.

The breath was squeezed out of her, in a rush, but she still had presence of mind to know who was attacking her, and clumsily brandished the makeshift stake.

Watching the weapon with bloodshot eyes, the Count shot out his free hand, and clutched the wrist with such force, that the hand sprung open in a spasm of pain, and the wood tumbled out to land, impotently, on the ancient floor.

Using that same hand, with predatory speed, he cupped her chin, and with a flex of his forefinger, roughly forced her head to one side, exposing her vulnerable throat to him.

"Get...the stake!" Marcie managed to scream to Darkfang, who stood frozen before the capture. "It's for...him!"

Before she had time to think of a futile countermove against him, the vampire grinned greedily over her, and stabbed his fangs down into her giving carotid.

Despite her thin frame, pain, confusion and fear drove Marcie to struggle harder, even as her life and strength literally began to flow from her body. As her body began to grow weak, the Count was no longer clutching to restrain her, but simply holding up his meal, as he lay her down onto the dusty floor, quietly finishing her, his voluminous cape shrouding the unfortunate, young detective.

Darkfang couldn't run. He was clutched by the unseen force of fear, the same way Marcie's killer had held fast to her, and like her killer, it was unyielding, uncompromising, and unsatisfied.

The truth of the existence of vampires never exploded in Darkfang's mind the way it did with the death of Marcie Fleach. Not only did she die, just then, but the innocence of mankind would, as well. Despite man's long inhumanity to man, they would never be safe again. Life, as they knew it, was a long, blissful dream, in comparison to the nightmare that he was now privy to.

The feral personification of all of his future terrors regarded him with unsated eyes, then, he slowly stood up over the paltry glow of Marcie's fallen penlight, like a stretching tower of black against a moonless night sky.

The cape softly flowed off of Marcie Fleach's corpse, but instead of being blessed with the release that only death could give, the girl...began to slowly stand on her own, animated by The Dark Count's perverse gift of unlife.

She looked like a parody of herself in life. Her rich brown hair was now more unkempt than usual, her glasses had a thin crack down one of its yellow-tinted lenses, her clothes stood disheveled upon her lanky frame, yet, her lips were still full and red, in stark contrast to her, now, porcelain-pale skin.

Lips, that now parted to display a predator's wares, bared for the hunt.

"You know," Marcie intoned without breaking her gaze on her prey. "There was a time when I didn't believe in ghosts or vampires. I'm so glad... _that I was wrong_."

Then, she said nothing more, as both fiends, quietly, moved forward, to stalk the stalker.

Darkfang was finally free from the spell of horror that gripped him, to back away from them, trying to calm his mind enough to remember the way to the entrance of this Gothic trap that Marcie had placed him in, despite the huntress becoming the hunted, and now, a new huntress, in her own right.

He found himself staring into both of their eyes. The Count's, cold and imperious. Marcie's, hot and gluttonous.

The vampires were beginning to close on him, their bodies eclipsing the penlight, the only brilliance he had in the room, and in the pits of his fear, Darkfang realized, too late, that he was walking far too slowly. He was a fly, helplessly caught deep in the mental webs of their power, to be fed upon and cast aside, or made into another thrall of the foul aristocrat.

Suddenly, the room exploded with a light bright enough to make even the creatures take pause, followed by the unexpected buzzing cacophony of electric generators starting up from a distant corner of the living room.

Daring to take his attention from the vampires, Darkfang looked to see a facially scarred doctor standing before an operating table, flanked and lit by the acrid, flickering light of two sparking Van de Graff generator towers.

"You killed Marcie!" the doctor howled in anguish and rage, pointing a buzzing bone saw at The Dark Count. "When she wasn't an amateur detective, she was also my lab assistant, you undead horror. But, no matter. I'll still get the secret of immortality from you, Count, and then I will be healed from my disfigurement, and become young again, forever!"

The Dark Count turned and started to walk over to the impudent doctor, eager to give a most fatal lesson to him, and told his new, young thrall, "Go, now, my slave! Darkfang knows far too much to live!"

"Yes, my master," Marcie said, looking at Darkfang, hungrily.

Darkfang frantically debated in his mind about going back to the closed, and probably locked, door, but he knew that if he did that, he wouldn't have the time to work it open. He had to deal with Marcie, first, if he could.

Off to the side, The Count and the mad Dr. Jantzen grappled and wrestled mightily with each other by the metal table. Using that as a distraction, he daringly darted past Marcie, and flew up the dark staircase, the hissing, and neophyte vampire in close pursuit.

Upstairs, both teens became hunter and prey, running across the decrepit hallway, and into the various bedrooms, entering one and, impossibly, exiting out the other.

This happened for a few moments more, until Darkfang made the miscalculation of ducking into the main bathroom, and slipping on loose floor tiling by the old-style bathtub.

"Why didn't I pick up that stick when she dropped it?" he asked himself, while trying to catch his breath. Then, she came.

Marcie strolled in, triumphantly, to savor the capture.

"It's too bad you didn't tell me where you hid the director," she taunted, her body blocking what little ambient light was in the corridor behind her. "You were right, though. When I'm finished with you, I guess no one _will_ ever see the director... _or you_ , again."

Darkfang squirmed under Marcie's gaze, which seemed to glow in her silhouette. "No! Wait a minute! You don't understand! Look, if I tell you where he is, will you let me go?"

Marcie stopped, momentarily, her eyes, brightening with amusement. "Let you go? My first kill? What did you tell me earlier? Unlikely, but proceed."

"H-He's at my aunt's house, okay?" Darkfang wailed in confession. "A-All right, I told you. Now, let me go!"

Marcie shrugged. "Can't do that."

"But, I told you where he is!" he sputtered. "That's not fair!"

"I'm a vampire, now," Marcie said with a sinister pleasantness. She knelt down to where Darkfang lay and pulled his collar away from his neck. Since he was far too terrified to resist her, it was easy.

Her lips hovered over his pounding carotid artery. "Who said anything about being fair?"

The old house on the hill rang clear with the hapless screams of an unlucky Darkfang, that evening.

The lights of the house, suddenly, came back on, revealing camera- and sound people on both floors, camouflaged in black clothes, taking apart and closing down their equipment.

Albrecht, Bleed and Van Ghoul soon arrived by the bathroom doorway to check on Marcie, who was now sitting on the edge of the bathtub, laughing, and removing her fangs and make-up.

"How…How did you... _do_ all of this?" Darkfang asked, incredulously.

"The same way you did it, with your scares and escapes," she explained. "Movie magic."

"Wait," he said, suddenly confused. "Why did you go into that furniture store, and come out with that stake?"

"Because, I wanted your imagination to run away from you, while you were watching me..." Marcie reached over and grabbed the sides of his neck, stretching and pulling away the false skin, unmasking him. "GoreGuru86 or, maybe I should just call you Robert."

"GoreGuru's fine," he muttered, trying to keep some semblance of dignity.

"Robert, it is," Marcie announced, as punishment.

"I thought that you were really going after a vampire, or something," he admitted.

"I know. That's why I let you listen in on my little acting on the phone. I told you it was a trap. Anyway, I have to admit that you're quite the special effects man," she complimented. "You said that your father was heard screaming on the day he was kidnapped from his trailer. He _was_ heard, but he needed a little help.

"See, I was in the trailer when you first attacked us, and I barely heard what was going on, outside.

When I saw the little speaker, and its tiny cord, by the window, I suspected that you might have used a tape recorder, meaning that you recorded his screams, earlier, and then, played them back against the window, so someone _could_ hear them. The fact that you, probably, used the same tape recorder to play the bubbling sounds in the factory, proved that you _did_ use it, earlier."

"Yeah," Robert muttered.

"The lift under your father's trailer, the dry ice storm, and the projected ghosts in your first attack to scare us, was a nice touch, too, based on my film, _Hill's Haunted Rest Home_ , I believe," Vincent said.

Bleed said, as well, "Our little visit from Uncle Wolfe, the villain from _my_ film, _Barking 2_ , was an actor, was he not?"

"And your little deathtrap for me, inspired by the wax statue scene in Van Ghoul's _Castle of Runny Discharge_."

"I guess so," Robert nodded, again.

"This morning, I went to your blog, and sure enough, everything that happened to me and the actors, last night, and the night of the first attack, was written in there," Marcie told him. "I guess you'll be putting yourself in the _Local_ _Lunatics_ section, huh?"

"Why did you do all of this, young man?" interjected Albrecht, gruffly. "Production time was wasted with this stunt. Who put you up to this?"

The boy sighed in defeat. "If you gotta know. My dad and me. Having the great Christopher Bleed working alongside Vincent Van Ghoul-"

"Why is he "the great" Christopher Bleed and I just get a mention?" Vincent cut him off. "I'm just a great as he is, if not _more_ so!"

"The only thing great about you, Van Ghoul, is your ego." Bleed sniped.

Robert, forgetting his guilt, pointed accusingly at the pair. "There! That's the reason! You two can't go five minutes with arguing about who's the better actor. That affects shoots, wastes time and money, and * _makes my dad look bad, as a director_. So, we both hatched a plan. I would pretend to be Doctor Darkfang, a combination of The Dark Count and Doctor Jantzen. I would, then, pretend to kidnap my old man, and have you, Marcie, look for him and my character, making sure that you brought them along, too."

"Why?" Albrecht asked.

"So they would be forced to work together," he explained. "If they could see that they worked better together, than apart, they could bring that to the set, when they start filming again."

Albrecht was piecing it together, and he didn't like the outcome. "You mean to tell me that all this...was just a glorified trust exercise?"

"Yeah, but...we only did it to save the production, just like I said."

"Oh, I can see how you saved the production, young man," Albrecht said, sarcastically. "Days and money wasted because of a missing director, and two actors, one of whom is on loan from another studio, running around town, possibly risking life and very expensive limb. I guess I don't see a downside to this, at all!"

Robert, feeling the weight of the rash plan falling heavily upon his shoulders, hung his head low. "Please, don't fire my dad for it, sir," he begged. "I just didn't want their fighting to ruin his career. We won't do it again, sir, I promise."

Albrecht replied with a grunt.

"Robert-" Marcie said, before she was cut of by him.

"GoreGuru86."

Marcie was in no mood for his pretension. " _Robert_ , you said that you secretly followed me on all of my cases, and followed me, again, as Doctor Darkfang. You reported everything that happened in your blog, right?"

"Yeah. So?"

She turned to Albrecht. "How would you like to have an even better movie come out of this?"

He raised an eyebrow. Better movies _did_ make for bigger profits. "How so?"

"We do a major re-write. We use everything Robert-"

"GoreGuru86!"

"Shut up," she told him, and then continued without missing a beat. "-recorded and put into his blog. Think about it! The two masters of horror in a film where they eventually get along, and it shows on screen, just like they did, here, with our little trap! Think of the chemistry! And if there's one thing I know, sir, it's chemistry!"

"Hmm, it _would_ look better," Albrecht pondered. He looked in deep thought for a few seconds more, then, he conceded, satisfied. "Okay, then. We'll go through with it."

He, then, turned to the two stars. "How do you two feel about it?"

"We are actors, Mr. Albrecht," intoned Bleed. "We shall do it."

"Bleed doesn't speak for me, of course," Van Ghoul said, quickly. "But, for once, I agree with him. We'll do it."

"Wonderful!" said the grateful studio head, pointing to the boy. "You, get your father back up here. He's got a movie to direct, and maybe I'll have you on site as...uh, a technical consultant, or something. You gotta better than that weird Dinkley woman."

"You," he told a surprised Marcie Fleach. "We've got to get to Wardrobe."

"And me," he sighed to himself. "I have to break it to the screenwriter that his script's going to need some serious last-minute changes."


	6. 6

_6~_

Three figures stood before the burning remains of a mansion that they once fought in, and now, found meaning in.

Christopher Bleed, as The Dark Count, looked at the night sky, watching the embers from glowing wood, float up to become as new stars, themselves, then declared to the others, "It would take the destruction of our lair to bring us together in our shared, yet uncommon goal."

He walked over to Marcie, being filmed in her character, as newly formed vampire, Marsha, and placed a hopeful hand on her shoulder.

"For us," Marsha said. "The genesis of a new vampire nation."

"And for me," Vincent Van Ghoul, as the returned Dr. Jantzen, announced, "An entire world to experiment upon. The boundaries of science will yield only to me."

Christopher raised a hand as a symbol of solidarity, saying, "Let this night witness our dark pact. Power through Blood."

Marsha placed her hand on his. "Power through Youth."

"Power through Knowledge," concluded Jantzen, placing his hand onto Marsha's, as the mansion, lit up like a huge, crumbling bonfire, signaled to the world, the Phoenix-like return of evil.

"Cut!" ordered the director. "That's a wrap."

Marcie breathed a sigh of relief, as the crew gave a cheer. That was the final scene of the production, ironically, the final scene of the film, as well.

It was a heady roller-coaster ride of studying lines, doing schoolwork via a tutor, and shooting scenes.

She gave a thoughtful gaze at the set around her, thinking, _'I never thought I'd live to see the day. Marcie Anne Fleach, actress.'_

She let a smile come over her, when she hoped that this new Hollywood life didn't spoil her and make her lose her passion in being a scientist.

"Congratulations, Marcie," Vincent said, noticing her standing by her folding chair, as he and Christopher walked over to her. "How does it feel to be star?"

Marcie self-consciously rubbed her arm. "Well, I don't know about being a star, but it was a really cool experience working with the two of you. I'm honored, you guys."

"And we were equally honored in having you make us see past our bickering to the true craftsmen we were, all along," Bleed said, in his voice that still moved Marcie from within.

"Well, guys," she said, heading out of the sound stage. "Tradition calls for there to be a wrap party after the wrap of a movie. I just hope I can survive my first one."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry," Van Ghoul said. "They couldn't be as wild as the ones in my day. Why, I remembered the wrap party my crew threw after finishing my film, _Me, Zombie_. I forgot to spell my name when that was party was done."

"Balderdash!" challenged Bleed. "The party _my_ crew held after the filming of _The Dark Count vs. Disco_ , was legendary in its raucousness."

"Oh, honestly, Bleed. You think one of those tea parties could hold a candle to one of my debaucheries?"

"Compared to mine, yours were mere cotillions."

And so it went. They obviously couldn't help it. The two good-naturedly argued, compared notes, and name-dropped about roles they had with the likes of other dark luminaries, like Bela Lughostly, Boris Krawloff, Peter Crushing, Basil Wrathbone, and Peter Gory. Marcie didn't mind.

Now that the mystery was solved and put behind her, they could banter to their hearts' content, and she had to admit, she was have a kick out of listening to their Hollywood war stories.

She would have to wait about a year, however, before she could see herself on the silver screen, and, happily, have a war story of her own to tell.

* * *

It was hidden deep in one of Crystal Cove's numerous cliff faces, that overlooked the crashing surf of the Pacific. Quest Lab Facility #16.

Inside a secure chamber in the center of the complex, technicians, engineers, and computer programmers buzzed around the tall machine, and the two men, that held court, within.

"So, you managed to save the Hour Tower, I beg your pardon, Arch," Greenman said, looking up at the immensity of the construct. "It looks as if you lucked out."

"Luck had nothing to do with it, Mr. Greenman," Benton corrected him. "It was long-term planning, nothing more. Those meddlesome Fleach women slowed down things with their antics, but, in the end, even they couldn't best me."

"I heard. By the way, Quest, how's your son doing?"

Benton glared at Greenman. He knew that he couldn't care less about his boy, and only asked to needle him.

He, then, smiled, as he reminded himself what he would do to him once Greenman came back from his sojourn into the past. Although he didn't believe in luck, Benton hoped that something unforeseen, and particularly brutal, happened to him while he was there.

"Jonny's recuperating fine," Benton answered, amicably. "Fortunately, he's not rejecting the Questoid skin grafts. They will give him their resilience to damage when all is said and done."

"Good, good. As for me, I grow impatient to claim my destiny, so I will test the long-range capabilities of the machine, myself."

It took all of Benton's willpower not to show a smile following such good news, as that. It was planned that test animals would be sent both into the past, and then, the future, first, to chart the viability of sending humans safely through, later.

But if Greenman's heart was so set on testing it, himself, then who was Benton Quest to stand in the way? Such impatience would cost him dear, however, if complications came about. Complications that Quest, sincerely, wished would befall his partner.

But, he had to, at least, put on a show of concern for his well-being, and so, he asked him, "You wouldn't want any weapons? You may need them, in case you run into hostile savages."

With ease, Greenman lifted a suitcase that took two people to drag to that spot, near him, and walked with long-practiced confidence up the ramp to the dais.

"As opposed to the hostile savages of today?" he asked, rhetorically. "No. The risk is too great that the mercenaries I'll hire may steal the weapons of today and contaminate the timeline by spreading them out across Europe. I will face them, and my destiny, on my own."

He entered the cylindrical cabin, placed the suitcase down near him, entered the spatial and temporal co-ordinates into the control pedestal, and then, sat on the curved couch.

A quiet hum filled the cabin, and Greenman decided not to give Quest the satisfaction of showing fear, even if he couldn't physically see it. If the worst did come to past, he knew that he would still survive to either try again, or get revenge on Quest for his possible sabotage. His gods would see to that.

The humming soon stopped, and Greenman cautiously opened the curved, dusky door of the cabin.

A grassy field filled the vista of his vision, with a small, lone keep perched strategically on a hill.

He reached back in to get his suitcase and stepped out of the cabin. Looking around, he couldn't see the Arch that spanned over the cabin, back in Quest's hide-out. It brought the capsule and him to where and when he wanted, but then, it remained, securely, in the twenty-first century.

He felt a twinge of anxiety at the thought of leaving the cabin behind to implement his plan. It was the only earthly way of returning to his native time. Perhaps, he could force some peons to help hide it from the curious, before slaying them to protect the secret of its location.

But for now, he decided to take those first, tentative steps towards the keep on the hill.

His plan would start small, simple. He would kill the armed occupants therein, hire bands of mercenaries with the pounds of gold he was carrying in his suitcase, sack every major religious center on Earth, and then, afterwards, return to England to raise the Druid faith, his faith, into the ecclesiastical stratosphere.

But first, he needed the keep as a temporary base of operations, as his mind readied for slaughter.

Baby steps, after all.


End file.
